BEECH FAMILY 



bright clear yellow. Petioles short, stout, slightly angled. Stipules 

 caducous. 



Flowers. — June, July. Monoecious, fragrant. Staminate catkins 

 six to eight inches in length, with stout, green, hairy stems covered 

 with flower clusters. The androgynous catkins are slender, hairy, 

 from two and a half to five inches in length, near their base are two 

 or three clusters of pistillate flowers ; above these pistillate flowers 

 are scattered clusters of staminate flowers ; these are smaller than 

 those on the staminate catkins and fall from the persistent rachis ; 

 which continues to rise above the short raceme of fruit. The stami- 

 nate flowers appear in three to seven-flowered cymes in the axils of 

 minute bracts which are borne on the rachis of the ament. Calyx 

 bell-shaped, pale straw color, six-lobed, lobes imbricate in bud, 

 corolla wanting. Stamens ten to twenty inserted on the torus ; fila- 

 ments exserted, white ; anthers pale yellow, introrse, two-celled, 

 cells opening longitudinally. Ovary has aborted. Pistillate flowers 

 appear solitary or two or three together within a short stemmed in- 

 volucre of closely imbricated green scales, at the base of a bract 

 borne on the rachis of the pistillate aments. Calyx bell-shaped, six- 

 lobed. Stamens rudimentary. Ovary inferior, six-celled, styles six, 

 white, hairy, exserted ; ovules two in each cell. The involucres or 

 burs grow rapidly, are full size by the middle of August, begin to 

 open with the first frost and shedding their nuts fall late in autumn. 



Fruit. — Nuts much compressed, two or three in a bur, coated at 

 the apex with thick pale tomentum. The shell is lined with thick 

 rufous tomentum and the seed is sweet. 



Defenseless in the common road she stands 

 E.xposed to restless war of vulgar hands, 

 By neighboring clowns and passing rabble torn 

 Battered with stones by boys and left forlorn. 



—Cowley. 



The amber buds of the chestnut are unfolding into long green fans, though it 

 will be long ere the trees decked with their drooping tassels hum like great 

 hives with the music of the bees. 



— Edith Thomas. 



In some places we fynd chestnutts, whose wild fruict I maie well sale equalize 

 the best in France, Spaine, Germany, Italy or those so commended in the Black 

 Sea by Constantinople, all of which I have eaten. 



— HiSTORIE OF TRAVAILB INTO VIRGINIA BRITANNIA. 



The Chestnut stands unnoticed in the forest until mid- 

 summer when, all at once, after the other trees have blossomed 

 and some of them fruited, after the elm has scattered her 

 samaras, the red maple dropped her keys, when cherries are 

 ripe and apples half grown, the Chestnut flings out her 



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