CUPULIFERAE 109 



uallv throwing off sparks. An extract from the wood has come 

 into use in recent years for tanning, and large quantities of chest- 

 nut are cut in the mountains of North Carolina for that purpose. 

 An infusion of the dried leaves has heen used in the treatment of 

 whooping cough and similar ailments. The nuts are produced in 

 abundance, and constitute an important article of food, especially 

 for the small boy. (The European chestnut, which is not very 

 different from ours, is cultivated extensively in southern Europe 

 for its nuts, many of which are shipped to this country.) 



References: Ashe 1. Also "Nut culture in the United 

 States," referred to a few pages back, under Hicoria Pecan. 



The chestnut grows in rather dry non-calcareous woods, espe- 

 cially on rocky slopes among the mountains. It seems to be mod- 

 erately tolerant of fire, but probably does not thrive where earth- 

 worms are present. It is nowhere abundant in Alabama, but was 

 doubtless more so originally. It has several enemies and diseases, 

 and perfectly sound trees are rare. There is abundant testimony 

 to the effect that it has been dying out all over the South for three- 

 quarters of a century or more. In northwestern Alabama its de- 

 cline is said by the inhabitants there to have begun with a late 

 freeze in May, 1854, which killed all the chestnut trees over con- 

 siderable areas.* In Georgia the beginning of the trouble has been 

 placed by some as far back as 1840, and in South Carolina even 

 earlier. f The dying of the chestnut in some parts of Xew York 

 and North Carolina has been ascribed to a fungus, Annillaria 

 mcllca, which also attacks oaks \% and the same thing may have 

 happened in Alabama. About 1905 a very virulent fungous disease 



*B. L. C. Wailes, in a report on the geology of Mississippi, published 

 in 1854 (pp. 352, 354), stated that the chestnut ranged south to latitude 31° 

 in Marion County, but had become diseased and was rapidly dying out. 

 Miss Caroline Rumbold, in a communication entitled "A new record for a 

 chestnut tree disease in Mississippi" (Science II. 34:917. Dec. 29, 1911) 

 says_ Dr. E. W. Hilgard found all the chestnut trees in northeastern Missis- 

 sippi dead in 1856. (But the species must have come back to a consider- 

 able extent since then, for it is still found there.) Dr. A. W. Chapman, in 

 his Flora of the Southern United States, 1860, gave the range of this 

 species as "\\'est Florida and northward" : but there seems to be now no 

 authentic record of its occurrence in a wild state within forty miles of 

 Florida. (Prof. Sargent, in his latest Manual of North American Trees, 

 extends its range to Crestview. Fla., but that record may have been based 

 on a cultivated or old field specimen.) For notes on the dying out of the 

 chestnut in Alabama see Mohr's Plant Life. pp. 14 (footnote), 61, 70, 468. 



tSee H. Hammond, South Carolina (handbook), p. 146, 1883. 



tSee W. H. Long, U. S. Dept. Agric. Bull. 89. 1914. 



