THE ROMANCE OF OUR TREES— 

 V. THE HORSECHESTNUT 



ERNEST H. WILSON 



Assistant Director, Arnold Arboretum 



Admitted to Be the Most Beautiful Exotic Flowering Tree in the Eastern 

 Part of the United States— Would the Consensus of Popular Opinion Be as 

 Overwhelmingly in Its Favor Here as It Surely Would Be in England? 



fO POET or writer of prose has immortalized it in 

 the sense that the Holly, Yew, and Weeping Willow — 

 not to mention the Rose — have been immortalized ; 

 and considering its striking appearance, its handsome 

 flowers and its general popularity, comparatively little has 

 been written about the Horsechestnut tree. Some have even 

 seen in its prodigality of blossoms 

 and the manner in which they 

 strew the ground a symbol of os- 

 tentation, but surely this is harsh 

 judgment. Should it not with 

 more propriety be likened to the 

 exuberance of childhood — 

 healthy, carefree and as over-flow- 

 ing with happiness as schoolboys 

 on joyous holiday? Of all trees in- 

 deed it is most fitting to be re- 

 garded as the emblem of vigorous 

 youth; and the manner in which 

 it — an alien — came to the parks 

 and gardens of western Europe 

 and to those of this country and 

 by merit of its hardiness, its sturdy 

 growth, and its lovely flowers 

 established itself among us and 

 holds its own among the wealth 

 of indigenous trees, strikingly 

 bears out the analogy. 



In literature and art Greece 

 has given much to the world and 

 the western world gladly acknowl- 

 edges the debt it owes. But it is 

 riot generally known that to her 

 many other gifts Greece added 

 the Horsechestnut. This fact is 

 established after a lapse of three 

 and a quarter centuries. Western 

 Europe's first knowledge of the 

 Horsechestnut came through trees 

 cultivated in Constantinople — 

 just as happened with the Lilac, 

 most familiar of garden shrubs. 

 The two discoveries almost syn- 

 chronized, the Lilac being sent from Constantinople to 

 Vienna in 1560, and seeds of the Horsechestnut in 1576. 

 The latter were sent from Constantinople to Vienna by Dr. 

 von Ungnard, the Imperial Ambassador to the court of 

 Suliman II, and a tree was raised by the celebrated Clusius. 



This tree grew rapidly and is mentioned by Clusius, with a 

 good figure of the leaves and fruit and the history of its in- 

 troduction to Vienna, on page 7 of his work entitled 

 " Rariorum Plantarum Historia," published in 1601. 



But a Flemish doctor, one Quakleben, who in 1557 was 

 attached to the embassy of Archduke Ferdinand I at Con- 



stantinople, first mentioned the 



tree in a letter to Mattioli as 

 told in the " Epistolarum medi- 

 cinalium libri quinque," pub- 

 lished in Prague in 1561. Later 

 Mattioli received a fruit-bearing 

 branch and published the first 

 description of the tree with a good 

 figure of the leaves and fruit on 

 page 212 of his " Commentarii in 

 libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis De 

 medica materia," which was pub- 

 lished in Venice in 1565. 



Mattioli called it Castanea 

 equina because the fruits were 

 known as At-Kastane (Horse- 

 chestnut) to the Turks who 

 found them useful as a drug for 

 horses suffering from broken wind 

 or coughs. Here then we have 

 the origin of the popular name 

 which has remained unchanged 

 to this day. The generic name 

 Aesculus (from esca, nourish- 

 ment) was adopted by Linnaeus 

 — but was first given by Pliny 

 to a kind of Oak having an edible 

 fruit. The specific name Hip- 

 pocastanum was also adopted by- 

 Linnaeus in 1753 and is the ver- 

 nacular name latinized. 



THE TREE AS WE KNOW IT HERE 



This young sugar-loaf specimen growing on the Parkway in 



Jamaica Plain, Mass., is the type of Aesculus Hippocastanum 



familiar to us and beloved of young America under the name 



of "candle tree" 



THE first Horsechestnut seeds 

 were brought to France by 

 Bachelier from Constantinople in 

 161 5, and it was probably intro- 

 duced to England about the same 

 time, for in Johnson's edition of Gerard's "Herbal," pub- 

 lished in 1633, it is stated that the tree was growing in 

 John Tradescant's garden at South Lambeth. In the original 

 edition, published in 1597, Gerard mentions it as a tree grow- 

 ing in Italy and sundry places of the eastern countries. 



267 



