HORSE-CHESTNUT FAMILY 



acuminate, feather-veined ; midrib and primary veins prominent. 

 They come out of the bud conduphcate, woolly, brownish green, 

 drooping ; when full grown are dark green, thick, rough abo\'e, 

 paler green beneath. In autumn tliey turn a rusty yellow. Peti- 

 oles long, grooved, swollen at the base, sometimes chatTy at the 

 point the leaflets diverge. 



Flowers. — May, June. Terminal, polygamo-monrecious, white, 

 unilateral, borne in upright thyrsoid panicles ; pedicles jointed, four 

 to six-fiowered. 



Calvx. — Campanulate, gibbous, five-lobed, lobes unequal, imbri- 

 cate in bud ; disk hypogynous, annular, lobed. 



Corolla. — Petals five, imbricate in bud, alternate with calyx lobes, 

 more or less unequal, with claws, nearly hypogynous, spreading, 

 white, spotted with yellow and red. 



Stamens. — Se\en, inserted within the hypogynous disk ; filaments 

 thread-like, exserted, curved ; anthers introrsc, two-celled ; cells 

 opening longitudinally. 



Pistils. — Ovary superior, three-celled ; style thread-like ; stigma 

 pointed ; ovules two. 



Fruit. — A coriaceous capsule, globular, rough, prickly, three or 

 two or one-celled by suppression, loculicidally three-valved. Seeds 

 or nuts solitary in each cell, brown, shining, with a large round pale 

 scar, or hilum. October. Embryo fills the seed; cotyledons very 

 thick and fleshy, remaining underground in germination. 



The Horse-cliestnut in tlie earlier weeks of M.i\' is :i siglit for ,G:ods and 

 men. — Philip (iiLniiirr H.-\mi;k'I ON. 



No knowledi^e of technical terms is necessar\" to enalile one to pnll apart 

 one of tile threat iiurse-cliestnut jjuds, to notice tlic water-proof \arnish on the 

 ontside, the scale armor jtist witliin, the sijit down)- padding whieii i>rotects the 

 minute leases and the tip of tlie stem from sudden clianges of temj^erature, to 

 see that leases or fliiwer cluster are alread)' formed in miniattirc ready to 

 burst their coserini; when the fa\-orable time siiall come. — (jF.okgk LJ. Pij^.kce. 



Our well-known Morse-cliestiuit is a native of Greece and 

 began to he ciiltivatccl throughout Europe in the seventeenth 

 centur}'. Stani^ling- alone and alloweil to attain its natural 

 shape it becomes a stately tree. The trunk is erect, and 

 the branches come out with such regularity that it develops 

 a superb cone-like head. The branches almost invariably 

 take the compound curve, upward from the trunk, downward 

 as the branch lengthens, and upward at tlie tip. 



The spray is clumsy', and in winter each twig is finished 

 by a large terminal bud an inch or more long, which bears 



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