CASTANEA VULGARIS, EIN GROWN IN SOUTHERN 
CHINA. 
By H. F. Hance, Pu.D. 
ee. the autumn and winter seasons, the markets of Be ane and - 
Tien- tsing. Mr. "uem informs me that he was aware that a Rn 
of an inferior quality comes from the north of Kwang-tung province, but 
no one seems to have known that the tree is cultivated in the immediate 
neighbourhood of Canton. Such 1s, however, the case, as proved by 
abundant, and peed wild. 
The distribution of this tree is somewhat singular ; for, ostiis plenti- 
ful in Japan, it does not, on the Asiatic — apparently extend 
northwards into either Manchuria or Mongolia ; though common in 
south-eastern Europe, it does not spread in that direction beyond the im 
mediately conterminous districts of Asia. It is especially remarkable that 
it should be absent (at least I can find no record anywhere of its occur- 
rence), from the whole of Hindostan and the Himalayan provinces, in 
some of which it might have been confidently looked for. In Japan the 
tree seems very variable in its foliage, and has been M prg by the late 
Professor Blume + as a distinct species, under the n f C. japonica, 
of cia he admits no less than twelve varieties, to which “oul doubt- 
less be added his C. Bungeana and C. mollissima. With the exception of 
the last, these s been referred to thé European species by M. Alphonse 
De Candolle;i and I may add that that agra shed botanist and accu- 
rate observer M. Maximowicz, who had ample opportunities of observi 
the living tree, wrote to me in 1863, while residing at Nagasaki, that Dd 
believed *'there is only one Castanea which grows ‘wild in eng and the 
seeds and the whole habit of the plant remind me so exactly of C. vesca, 
that I px but think it is the same plant." 
The ese specimens before me are not unlike some given me 
Teijema G as the true C. japonica, Bl. They have Tug petioles (5—6 lines 
long), and a limb 5-7 inches i in length, and 23-23 broad, for the ien 
part only very obscurely toothed at the edge, and with the setiform a 
of the primary veins very shortly produced. But they differ besides front 
the ordinary European and American varieties, and resemble rather C. 
* Enum. Pl. Chin. Bor. 62. Blume describes this as a new species, under the 
name of oe It is og in Maximowicz's * Ido Flore Pekinensis.’ 
* 
