NOTES FROM A GARDEN HERBARIUM. 



277 



tinguish the European and American chestnuts, and they 

 appear to me to prove, aside from other evidence, that 

 Paragon is an American chestnut, and that Barnie, 

 Numbo and Shinar are European. I think that some of 

 the garden seedlings are crosses between the two. This 

 is particularly apparent in a so-called American seed- 



have some large tall trees of the American type which 

 bear nuts distinctly European in appearance." Mr. 

 Moon says that in cultivation the American chestnut' is 

 more erect in habit than the European and makes a taller 

 and narrower tree. Mr. Moon remarked before the 

 Nurserymen's Association last ^summer that 'the fuzz 



ling which Mr. Moon sends me, the leaves having the 

 obtuse or even heart-shaped base of the well marked 

 European type, and the tapering point and something of 

 the dentation of the American. And I am confirmed in 

 this opinion by the following statement from Mr. Moon : 

 ' ' While I observe marked differences in most cases, I 



Fig. I. Japanese Chestnut (Orj-Zfj^zifa 



Jil/^OIliia). ]A NATURAL SIZE. 



about the point of the nut is thicker in 

 the American variety and covers a great- 

 er portion of the shell, but I have not been 

 able, so far, to look upon this as a con- 

 stant character. 

 An interesting feature of the chestnut leaf is the varia- 

 tion in pubescence or woolly covering of the lower sur- 

 face. Nearly all writers describe the leaves of both the 

 European and American as smooth at maturity — De 

 Candolle says that the European is sometimes canescent 

 — and all the wild specimens which I have examined have 



