Chestnut Tree
Its name and origin of the chestnut tree are alike somewhat doubtful. It is most abundant in an apparently wild state in Southern Europe, extending eastward to the Caucasus, and occurring in the islands of the Mediterranean at moderate elevations above the sea. A similar or identical form occurs in the mountains of Virginia, Georgia, and Carolina. There are forests composed of this species in Alsace and Rhenish Prussia; and it is common, though possibly planted, in Normandy and around Paris.
The name occurs twice in the authorized version of the Bible; but there is little reason to suppose that it is rightly used, though, no doubt, its starchy nuts must have been widely used for food from the earliest times. The town of Kastana in Thessaly is generally referred to as the source of the Latin, if not of the Greek name; but, as De Candolle has pointed out, considering that names which are virtually identical are applied to the tree in all the most ancient languages of Central Europe, it is more probable that the town took its name from the trees which surrounded it. Thus the Breton Kistinen, for the tree, and Kistin, for its fruit, and the Welsh Castan-wydden and Sataen, are closely related to the French Chataigne, and the Latin name which is still the scientific appellation of the genus.
According to Pliny, the Greeks obtained the tree from Sardis in Asia Minor, at least five centuries before the Christian era, a statement which De Candolle doubts, since he considers the tree undoubtedly wild in Greece, where, as early as the fourth century B.C., Theophrastus, "the Father of Botany," speaks of it as covering the slopes of Olympus.
Old chestnut-trees, especially when once lopped close to the ground, seem often to exhibit a growing together or fusion of many stems into one, a circumstance that explains many of the instances of enormous circumference which have led authors, not only to assert the indigenous character of the species, but also to claim for it an almost fabulous longevity.
The largest chestnut-tree in the world is undoubtedly the Castagno di cento cavalli ("chestnut of a hundred horses") in the forest of Carpinetto on the east side of Mount Etna. It is 160 feet in circumference, and entirely hollow, a kiln for drying chestnuts--an article of food of considerable local importance--having been built inside it. Supposing each annual ring of wood to be a line in thickness, a fair estimate for an unsplit tree, the circumference of this giant of the forest would indicate from 3,600 to 4,000 years of life. Other trees in the neighborhood of Etna, where chestnuts are cultivated with great care, approach the dimensions of the giant; and, among other historical trees on the Continent, one in the department of Cher, in France, is noticeable as having been celebrated as a large tree for five or six centuries, though only thirty feet round.
Turner, in his "Names of Herbs" (1548), writes: "Nux castanea is called in Greeke Castanon, in Englishe a chestnut-tree, in Duch Castene, in French Ung Chastagne. Chesnuttes growe in diverse places of Englande. The maniest that I have sene was in Kent;" and in 1578, Lyte, in his translation of Dodoens, says of it, "Amongst all kindes of wilde fruites the chestnut is best and meetest to be eaten;" whilst from Shakespeare's allusions to it in "Macbeth" and the "Taming of the Shrew," it would seem to have been a common article of food in his time.
The bark of the young saplings is smooth and of a rich vinous maroon or red-brown tint; but in older trees it becomes grey, and splits in vertical lines so as to allow of the expansion of the wood within. These vertical cracks widen, deepen, and sometimes, as the tree grows, become twisted, thus often giving to the full-grown chestnut stem a most distinctive rope-cable-like appearance. The tree attains a height of fifty, eighty, or even a hundred feet, and single stems may no doubt exceed twenty feet in girth. The branches are given off alternately and nearly horizontally, but, spreading outwards, bend downwards at their extremities so as sometimes to sweep the ground. The whole outline of an unpollarded tree is remarkably round-topped, even more than is that of the oak; but its bright pendent foliage, reflecting the sunlight, prevents the general effect from being heavy. William Gilpin notices how Salvator Rosa makes use of this, his favourite tree, in all its forms, breaking and disposing it in a thousand beautiful shapes, as the exigencies of his composition required.
The long, pointed, and sharply-toothed leaves seem to partake of the evergreen character of so many of the trees of the south in their thickness and gloss. When young they are often of a beautiful red color, and when mature of a very pleasant shade of green, without the blue tint common to many grasses, and, though perhaps as brown as the leaves of the buckthorn, redeemed from dullness by their shining surfaces. They are very much the color of the hornbeam, or of the beech when no longer young and emerald-hued, though not yet opaque and dull. The fine leaves, sometimes eight or nine inches long, are to some extent crowded so as to form tufts at the ends of the branches, and from their "axils," i.e., the angles where they are given off from the stem, spring the long pendulous catkins of flowers. In a favorable autumn the leaves turn to a clear lemon-yellow, stained with orange and brown where damp decomposes the, as yet, perfect texture. Some of the leaves seem, however, first to clear their green, light green patches occurring at the base of "the sere and yellow leaf," and the whole tree gaining a varied and revivified aspect, the forlorn hope of life before the winter death.
Flowers of both kinds are borne on every tree; but they are not very conspicuous, being no doubt dependent on the wind rather than on insects for their pollination. The slender yellowish catkins are five or six inches long, hanging from the axils of the young leaves in May. Each catkin bears a series of small scale-like "bracts," some little distance apart, and in the axil of each of these scales there are either seven staminate or three pistillate flowers. Either kind of flower is surrounded by a calyx of six minute greenish leaves, which in the female blossoms form a tube enclosing and adhering to the ovary. There are from eight to twenty stamens in each male flower, which discharge an enormous quantity of pollen, like a cloud of sulphur. So abundant is this pollen that, if it has not contributed, as has that of the pine, to our traditional folk-lore concerning rains of sulphur, it will certainly cover the water of any neighboring pond with its film of yellow dust, which, not being ornamental, is perhaps sufficient reason for not planting the tree on the margin of any small piece of ornamental water.
The "cupule," formed from the four bracteoles of the two lateral florets, corresponds to the cup of the acorn, the leafy husk of the hazel-nut, or the hook-covered casing of the beech-mast. Until the fruit is ripe it is entirely invested by this husk, which is thickly beset with prickles, each of which is said to represent an abortive branch. This ball-like chevaux-de-frise of protection ultimately splits into its four constituent bracteoles, disclosing the glossy brown fruits within. The ovary contains from five to eight chambers, and there are an equal number of stigmas, which are easily recognized, as they spread outwards in a radiating manner above the calyx which, even in the fruit stage, surmounts the ovary. Nature, the lavish Lady Bountiful, as she squanders the pollen, so provides generally two ovules in each chamber of the ovary, out of all of which one only, or three at the most, is matured into a seed.
The timber of the Chestnut resembles oak, being brown, moderately hard, fine-grained, and rather porous; but, being of slower growth, its rings are narrower; the "medullary rays" or "silver grain" is not traceable, nor is there any distinction between the heart-wood and sap-wood. It was formerly supposed that the roof of Westminster Abbey and other old wood-work in London was of this timber, a fact which would have been an argument for the antiquity of the growth of the Chestnut in England; but upon examination these buildings have proved to be of oak. Beyond the use of its saplings as hop-poles, chestnut timber is applied to no special purpose; but, growing as it will even in poor, sandy soil, or under the shade of fir-trees, it is a good deal planted as cover for game. In this situation it enlivens with its bright foliage the somber depths of the forest of red-stemmed Scotch firs, contrasting also with the dull sap-green of the heather and with the chrome of the birch-leaves, whilst in the park it keeps its brightness longer than the beech, and reflects more light than the bracken at its feet.