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 above, 
paler green beneath. In autumn they turn a rusty yellow.  Peti- 
oles long, grooved, swollen at the base, sometimes chatfy at the 
point the leaflets diverge. 
Flowers.—May, June. Terminal, polygamo-moneecious, white, 
unilateral, borne in upright thyrsoid panicles ; pedicles jointed, four 
to six-flowered. 
Calyx.—Campanulate, gibbous, five-lobed, lobes unequal, imbri- 
cate in bud; disk hypogynous, annuiar, 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. ° 
Sfamens.—Seven, inserted within the hypogynous disk ; filaments 
thread-like, exserted, curved; anthers introrse, 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-chestnut in the earlier wecks of May is a sight for gods and 
men. —PuHILip GILBERT HAMERTON, 
No knowledge of technical terms is necessary to enable one to pull apart 
one of the great horse-chestnut buds, to notice the water-proof varnish on the 
outside, the scale armor just within, the soft downy padding which protects the 
minute leaves and the tip of the stem from sudden changes of temperature, to 
see that leaves or flower cluster are already formed in miniature ready to 
burst their covering when the favorable time shall come.—GEORGE D. PIERCE. 
Our well-known Horse-chestnut is a native of Greece and 
began to be cultivated throughout Europe in the seventeenth 
century. Standing alone and allowed 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 the 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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