70 
CALIFORNIAN HORSE-CHESTNUT. 
I observed it very sparingly on the border of a small 
stream in the immediate vicinity of Monterey, in Upper 
California, flowering in the month of March, with the 
usual precocious habit of the genus. It appears also to 
have been observed in some part of California by Botta, 
according to Spach. 
It forms a low spreading bushy tree, about 15 to 20 
feet high, with clusters of spreading branches issuing 
from near the root, so as to form a sort of thicket. The 
trunk is smooth and grey, only a few inches in diameter, 
and the wood very similar to that of other species of 
the genus. 
The leaves, usually in 5’s, have broad and flat margi- 
nated petioles, terminating usually in 2 long, linear, 
conspicuous and somewhat membranaceous stipules; the 
whole cluster of leaves is also subtended by several 
broad stipules, which appear to be the innermost series 
of bud scales, but they are quite persistent and fre- 
quently terminated by rudiments of leaves; the inner 
leaves of the flowering branches are often in 3’s or 4’s. 
The leaflets, 3 to 4 inches long, are supported upon long 
and slender petioles, beneath they are pale and some- 
what glaucous, everywhere smooth, finely and obtusely 
serrulated and acute at the points, below they are 
rounded and sometimes sinuated. The flowers are of a 
pale rose-colour without a mixture of any other colour, 
and produced in a crowded, compound spike or thyrsus. 
The calyx is somewhat whitely villous, indistinctly 5- 
toothed, and at length cleft down nearly to the base on 
the lower side. The petals appear connivent, with the 
claws shorter than the calyx, scarcely at all spreading, 
and are generally in 4’s. Stamens 5 or 6. I have not 
seen the fruit, but the germ is 2 or 3-celled, and villous. 
Plate LXIV. 
A branch of the natural size. a. The germ. 
