Horse Chestnut Trees
(AEsculas hippocastanum)

SO hardy, so commonly planted, so well-known, and withal so beautiful a tree as the Horse-chestnut, cannot be passed by unnoticed. The land of its nativity is unknown. It has been variously stated as Thessaly and as Thibet; and its introduction into this country is said to date only from the year 1550. It is planted, mainly for ornament, throughout Europe, preferring a loam rather sandy than stiff, in which it will grow rapidly and regularly.

The smooth and almost cylindrical bole which it forms seldom exceeds twelve feet in girth, and is generally green on its surface from the Algae that invariably frequent the tree. The lowest branches are given off at from five to ten feet from the ground, and are the longest, so that, though always rounded above, the tree has, on the whole, a pyramidal outline. Starting in opposite pairs, like the leaves, the boughs, rising at an angle of 60 deg or 70 deg from the stem, bend in a graceful curve outwards and downwards almost at a right angle to their first direction, so as again to make an inclination of 60 deg or 70 deg from the upper part of the stem. They turn up at their points, thus describing in their entire course of growth a complex curve of unique beauty, which it is impossible adequately to describe in words. The whole tree is not often more than fifty or sixty feet high, and seldom seems to attain an age of more than from two hundred to two hundred and fifty years.

Towards the end of March the boughs attract attention by the swelling of their large buds, that are at this season well enclosed in a series of opposite scales, of which the outermost are hard and of a dark chocolate color. They continue to enlarge, and the glutinous cement that has protected them during winter now liquefies into a gum, or slime, that covers all the deciduous scales. Two by two these open outwards and fall off, until, in April, first one pair and then another pair of the delicate green leaflets make their appearance. The pale buff inner bud-scales at the bleak, leafless period of the end of March render the tree attractive, suggesting a candelabrum of unlighted waxen tapers; but,

"When drooping chestnut buds began
To spread into the perfect fan,"

they must have often seemed to many people as tongues of brilliant green flame, the vividness of their verdure, as seen scattered over the unclothed boughs, and illumined by the fitful gleams of an April sun, being excelled by none of the varied shades of green displayed by nature in that season of new-born youth. The leaves are composed of seven leaflets, arranged in a radiating "digitate" or "palmate" manner, and each of a peculiar outline, broad at the outer end and tapering towards the point of their insertion on their common leaf-stalk-a form known technically as "obovate-cuneate." At first these leaflets are downy and drooping; but, contrary to the general rule, their under-surfaces grow faster than the upper, so that they spread out horizontally, ultimately becoming very large, single leaflets sometimes reaching a foot in length, and the whole group being nearly two feet across, whilst the leaf-stalk becomes nearly a foot long and half an inch in diameter.

The glories of spring are but fleeting. By the time the leaves have stretched themselves to their full size, they have lost their beauty of color, and the tree, when not in flower, having no gloss to the surface of the foliage, and being densely covered in, so that no bough is visible, is a dull brownish-green mass in the landscape, destitute of light and shade. In May, however, ere this dulling is effected, a new beauty is displayed, that of blossom. Then it may truly be said, in the words of the authors of the "Forest Minstrel," that the chestnut is--

"gloriously array'd;
For in its honour prodigal nature weaves
A princely vestment, and profusely showers
O'er its green masses of broad palmy leaves
Ten thousand waxen pyramidal flowers;
And gay and gracefully its head it heaves
Into the air, and monarch-like it towers,
Dimming all other trees."

Then the larger green pyramid becomes but a background to set off the beauty of the lesser pyramids of snowy white, lined with gold, and just dashed with rosy red, whose beauty, when viewed from a distance, is only excelled by their perfection when closely scrutinized.  The flowers nearest the stalk on the lower branchlets are the first to open, and, receiving the full benefit of the nutriment prepared in the young and vigorous leaves, develop both stamens and pistils, so that they will be still represented amid the storms of the autumn equinox by the well-known globular fruits. The upper part of the thyrse bears flowers which are generally exclusively staminate, or male, and disappears after the discharge of their pollen; so that eight, six, or more commonly but two or three, fruits will in autumn be the sole result of all the beauty of an entire pyramid of blossoms. Thus the number of chestnut fruits in a cluster affords a gauge of the geniality of the preceding May.

Few trees, in fact, afford more palpable lessons in practical physiology than the Horse-chestnut. We may watch the brown leathery rind of its seed swell with moisture before the primary rootlet forces its way out, and we may see the melting of the gum over the buds and the shedding of their protecting scales. The arrangement of the leaves determines that of the branches, and the flowers at the end of a shoot prevent its further elongation: the leaflets rise from the vertical position, in which they offer but little surface to the chilling effects of radiation, by the more rapid growth of their under surfaces: their enlargement is an exemplification of the marvelous elasticity of the substance of their cells; and their large spreading surfaces, when mature, taking in abundant carbonic acid from the air, and, by the transpiration from their "stomates," or leaf-pores, drawing abundant supplies of water from the roots, seem obviously related to the rapid growth of the soft and spongy wood. In the flowers we see the dependence of sex on nutrition; and in the fruit, the economy of nature leading to a reduction in the number of seeds, since a large perennial plant has many more chances of perpetuating its species than an annual.

Returning to a closer examination of the flower, within its five green sepals we find five beautifully crimped or crisp petals, resembling those of the rose in texture, bent over so as to give the whole flower a somewhat one-sided appearance, making, in fact, its corolla vertical, while it is itself nearly horizontal. On each snowy petal are the splashes of pink and lines of yellow that guide the joyous bees to the copious honey secreted in the bottom of the purely tinted cup. To the Linnaean botanist the tree is exceptional in having seven stamens, four, five, or ten being far more common numbers; and in the center of the flower, beneath the single style, is the three-chambered ovary, each chamber containing the rudiments of two seeds.

In October the leaves, which have become dull--clogged with leaf-green, and with various saline and other excrementitious matters, substances not wanted in the many chemical processes of plant-life which have been carried on in the laboratory of the tree's body--begin to get clearer in color. The change varies in date and order. As Mr. Ruskin has truly said, "a group of trees changes the color of its leafage from week to week, and its position from day to day; it is sometimes languid with heat, and sometimes heavy with rain." If the weather be fine the leaves will generally turn to a lemon-yellow along the margins of their leaflets, while the midrib, and some of the other veins, remain edged with a band of green, clearer, paler, and more beautiful than any that the tree has borne during the three preceding months. If, however, the weather be wet, the delicate yellow is blurred with rusty stains, or the whole leaf becomes, before falling from the tree, of a rich ferruginous brown. Then as separate leaflets, or the great fans in their entirety, come tumbling down in the gale, every now and then a rush is heard through the boughs, and a green or brownish prickle studded sphere falls to earth with a thud, often bursting with the shock, and disclosing the finely polished and mottled mahogany-like chestnuts within. Many of the fruits are thus blown down when green, fleshy, and unripe, and often do not burst, but simply decay; or, if they are broken, show immature seeds of an ivory whiteness, instead of the harder brown ones that lie loose within the chambers of the drier, riper fruits. Then the ground, strewn with leaves, green, yellow, or brown, with green capsules, some displaying their pure white inner surfaces, and with the bright glossy chestnuts still bearing a white scar marking their former point of attachment, though it may not be tidy in the eyes of the gardener, is in those of the student of beauty a fresh debt that he owes to the Horse-chestnut.

Of the six ovules, we seldom find that more than three have reached the maturity of seedhood, and of these three--and there are sometimes not three-no two will be alike in size or marking. It is perhaps hardly necessary to allude by way of caution to the merely superficial resemblance between the seeds of the Horse-chestnut and the fruits of the Spanish Chestnut, their internal structure being, of course, wholly dissimilar. There is, at all events, but little fear that any one will confuse the taste of the bitter kernel of the former with the favorite nut of the south. It is probably in opprobrium that it is termed the Horse-chestnut, as we have Horse-mint, Horse-daisy, Dog-violet, or Dog-rose.

The so-called uses of the Horse-chestnut are few; but we must not demand too much mere commonplace utility from a plant that gives us so much that is more valuable to our souls. Its wood is soft, and though suitable for gunpowder-charcoal, of but little use as timber. Deer are fond of eating the fallen leaves and nuts; and, when crushed, they have been added to the food of sheep, cows, and poultry, and have been used in bleaching and in the manufacture of starch. The name has been said to be derived from the use of the seeds for the relief of cough in horses, and more fancifully from the horseshoe-like scar left by the falling leaves, the ends of the "fibro-vascular bundles," or chief veins, being marked by nail-like imprints.

As has been said, it is for its beauty, however, that we plant the Horse-chestnut. The variegated variety is not an improvement, and though the somewhat hot-looking species with red flowers may be effectively grouped with the common form, it seldom flourishes so well, and is certainly not as beautiful as its white-flowered ally. The outline of the Horse-chestnut is so regular and so massive that it is less pleasing as an isolated tree than when projecting from the front of a belt of other species, grouped in a clump either with several of its own kind or otherwise; or, best of all, when in a noble avenue, such as that dear to Londoners in Bushey Park.

Since it does not, like the elm, throw out great horizontal limbs to meet its neighbors and form a leafy arcade, such an avenue should in breadth be, if possible, at least 120 feet, or twice the height of the trees, that they may cast their shadows on the open space, and, when in flower, reveal a noble vista of verdure flecked with white clusters of blossom.

Palm Trees

Pine Trees

Oak Trees

Maple Trees

Willow Trees

Apple Trees

Trees Home