The Garden Magazine, February, 1920 



BEHOLD WHAT OUR HORSECHESTNUTS MAY COME TO! 



Specimens like this one in Kew Gardens shown in full flower with its thousands of 

 "candles" alight are a prophecy and a promise of suchj transcendent beauty that 

 its realization would seem doubtful if it were not attested by these very specimens 



the buds expand very rapidly — as the least observant must 

 have noticed — a whole shoot i to ij feet long being fully 

 developed inside of three weeks. These viscid winter buds 

 are characteristic and of importance. 



IN EASTERN North America several species of Horse- 

 chestnut grow wild. Here they are known as Buckeyes 

 — and is not Ohio the Buckeye State? But all these have 

 gray winter-buds perfectly free from any suspicion of resin. 

 The Old World species (of which there are six— one in 

 Japan, two in China, two in India and one in Greece) and 

 the two which grow wild in California have viscid winter- 

 buds. 



The large, nearly globular fruit with its prickly studded 

 shell is well known. It. splits and falls when ripe and liber- 

 ates the seeds, which vary from one to three and are glossy, 

 shining brown with a broad, pale gray base. The Horsechest- 

 nut is easily raised from seed, grows rapidly, and is readily 

 transplanted. In dry summers and in towns and on shallow 

 soils its leaves turn brown early and for this reason and also 

 on account of its fruit it is not a good tree for street planting. 

 For specimens and for avenues and parks, however, it is ex- 

 emplary. 



THE wood of the Horsechestnut is soft, lacks strength 

 and durability and is of little or no value. It burns 

 badly and is not therefore much good as fuel. The bark con- 

 tains gallic acid and a bitter principle which gives it value 

 as a tonic equalling that of the Willow. The seeds have 

 many uses besides the ancient one of the Turks and that 

 employed by schoolboys. Their taste is at once mild and 

 bitter and they are rich in starch. Reduced to powder they 

 serve as soap; roasted they are used as coffee; and fermented 

 they make a spirituous liquor which yields alcohol by distilla- 

 tion. The young aromatic buds have been substituted for 

 hops in the manufacture of beer. During the Great War 

 the nuts were tried in England for the preparation of acetone 

 by the fermentation process, and the difficulties attendant 

 on their use for this purpose were in a fair way of being sur- 

 mounted when the armistice was signed. 



Until comparatively recently the Caucasus, Persia, north 

 India and Thibet were variously given as the supposed home 

 of the Horsechestnut. On the authority of Dr. Hawkins, 

 Sibthorp says — in his " Flora of Greece," published in 1806 — 

 that this tree is wild on Mt. Pelion in Crete, but later in- 

 vestigators have decided that it was only planted there. For 

 centuries the native country of this tree was a matter of 



