X XIX. 
THE CHESTNUT TREE. 
CHESTNUT TREE.—Castanea belongs to the natural order 
Corylacee. The genus derives its name from Kastanea, a city 
in Pontus in Asia, of which locality the tree is a native. 
C. vesca (Gaertner) : The Sweet or Spanish Chestnut.—The 
term sweet is applied to it in reference to the fruit, and in 
contradistinction to that of the horse-chestnut, which is bitter ; 
it is named Spanish, because the best chestnuts for the table, 
sold in the London market, are imported from that country. 
The tree is believed to have been brought to Europe by the 
Greeks, from Sardis, in Asia Minor, about 500 years Bc. It 
was probably introduced into Britain by the Romans for the 
sake of its fruit, and being a tree of great duration, and ripening 
its fruit in favourable districts, it could hardly fail to become 
a permanent inhabitant. Linnzus united the genus Castanea 
with Fagus, the beech, which was not done by any botanist 
before his time, and which has not been adopted by any since. 
The distinctive characteristics of the two genera are—that the 
chestnut has male flowers on very long catkins, with the seeds 
farinaceous, while the beech, on the contrary, has male flowers 
on globular catkins, and the seeds oily. 
The chestnut is one of our most ornamental large-growing 
trees. The diameter of the trunk is commonly large in pro- 
portion to the diameter of the head or height of the tree, and 
the trunk generally assumes a convoluted or twisted appear- 
ance; its leaves are broad and long, strongly veined and 
serrated, of a dark green and glossy appearance, which change 
to a mellow yellow, or ripened hue in the end of autumn. It 
forms an important element in growing for picturesque effect. 
