FAGACE^E 219 



forests, and southward on the bottom-lands of streams and the margins of swamps; 

 valley of the Restigouche River, the northern shores of Lake Huron and northern 

 Wisconsin, southward to western Florida, and through southern Illinois and south- 

 eastern Missouri to the valley of the Trinity River, Texas; one of the most widely 

 distributed trees of eastern North America; of its largest size in the forests on 

 intervale lands in the basin of the lower Ohio River, and on the slopes of the southern 

 Alleghany Mountains. 



Often planted in the northern states as an ornamental tree. 



2. CASTANEA, Adans. Chestnut. 



Trees or shrubs, with astringent juice, furrowed bark, porous brittle wood, terete 

 branchlets without terminal buds, axillary buds covered by 2 pairs of slightly im- 

 bricated scales, the outer lateral, the others accrescent, becoming oblong-ovate and 

 acute and marking the base of the branch with narrow ring-like scars, stout perpen- 

 dicular tap-roots; producing when cut numerous stout shoots from the stump. Leaves 

 convolute in the bud, ovate, acute, coarsely serrate, except at the base, with thin veins 

 running to the points of the slender glandular teeth, deciduous; their petioles leav- 

 ing in falling small elevated semioval leaf-scars marked by an irregular marginal 

 row of minute fibre-vascular bundle-scars; stipules ovate to linear-lanceolate, acute, 

 scarious, infolding the leaf in the bud, caducous. Flowers monoecious, opening in 

 early summer, unisexual, strong-smelling; the staminate, in 3-7-flowered cymes, in 

 the axils of minute ovate bracts, in elongated simple deciduous aments first appearing 

 with the unfolding of the leaves from the inner scales of the terminal bud and from 

 the axils of the lower leaves of the year, composed of a pale straw-colored slightly 

 puberulous calyx deeply divided into 6 ovate rounded segments imbricated in the bud, 

 and 10-20 stamens inserted on the slightly thickened torus, with filiform filaments 

 incurved in the bud, becoming elongated and exserted, and ovoid or globose pale 

 yellow anthers; the pistillate scattered or spicate at the base of the shorter persist- 

 ent androgynous aments from the axils of later leaves, sessile, 2 or 3 together or soli- 

 tary within a short-stemmed or sessile involucre of closely imbricated oblong acute 

 bright green bracts scurfy -pubescent or tomentose below the middle, subtended by a 

 bract and 2 lateral bractlets, each flower composed of an urn-shaped calyx, with 

 a short limb divided into 6 obtuse lobes, minute sterile stamens shorter than the 

 calyx-lobes, an ovary 6-celled after fecundation, with 6 linear spreading white styles 

 hairy below the middle and tipped by minute acute stigmas, and 2 ovules in each 

 cell, attached on its inner angle, descending, semianatropous. Fruit maturing in one 

 season, its involucre inclosing 1-3 nuts, globose or oblong, pubescent or tomentose 

 and densely spiny on the outer surface, with elongated ridged bright green ultimately 

 brown branched spines fascicled between the deciduous scales, coated on the inner 

 surface with lustrous pubescence, splitting at maturity into 2-4 valves; nut ovate, 

 acute, crowned by the remnants of the style, bright chestnut-brown and lustrous, 

 tomentose or pubescent at the apex, cylindrical, or when more than 1 flattened, 

 marked at the broad base by a large conspicuous pale circular or oval thickened 

 scar, its shell lined with rufous or hoary tomentum. Seed usually solitary by abor- 

 tion, dark chestnut-brown, marked at the apex by the abortive ovules, with thick 

 and fleshy more or less undulate ruminate sweet farinaceous cotyledons. 



Castanea is confined to the northern hemisphere, and is widely distributed through 

 eastern North America, southern Europe, northern Africa, western Asia, and central 



