ball (5) covered all over with bristles. The seeds are ripening inside
this ball, two or three, sometimes five, seeds closely packed side by
side. In October the green covering splits into four pieces and the
seeds fall to the ground. Notice how beautifully this bristly covering
is lined with soft, silky down to protect the smooth skin of the nut.
Each nut is slightly flattened at the sides where it was tightly
pressed against its neighbour, and it comes to a point at the top,
where the withered remains of the seed bristles show in a dry brown
tuft. The skin on the Chestnut is dark brown, and there is a large scar
at the foot of the nut where it was fastened to the green cup.
In Italy, where there are miles and miles of Chestnut forests, the nuts
are gathered in sackfuls when October comes. They are then spread out
on a brick floor in a thick layer, and a fire, made of dry leaves and
sticks, is lit beneath. This fire is kept burning for ten days, and the
nuts are frequently turned with a wooden shovel. Whenever the skins
crack off quite easily the nuts are ready; the hard, cracked brown
skins are removed, and the nuts are ground into flour from which many
delicious foods are prepared.
The fruit of the Chestnut is one of the most important tree fruits we
know. In France and Italy the people use Chestnuts as much as we do
potatoes, and many are the clever ways in which they prepare and cook
them, but the commonest way is to boil and eat the chestnuts with a
little salt. When the cook is preparing the nuts, he makes a slit in
the skin of every Chestnut except one, and when that one bursts and
cracks with a loud noise, he knows that the others are ready.
The Chestnut fruit ripens in the South of England, but it is never so
large, nor is it so plentiful, as in the sunny South.
The wood of the Chestnut tree is valuable. For many years people
believed that the great beams in some of our old historic buildings
were Chestnut wood, and this made them think that the trees must have
grown much larger then than they do to-day. But it is now decided
that these old beams must be made of Oak. Old Oak beams are very like
Chestnut beams, but clever people tell us that Chestnut wood is best
when it is young, as the old wood is apt to break off in little pieces,
and it would not really be a suitable wood to use in buildings where
strength was needed.
Chestnut wood makes excellent fences and is also used for wine casks;
the hoops which go round these wine casks should be made of it, as it
does not rot in a damp cellar. Chestnut wood burns badly; it sends up a
great many sparks, and it smoulders, but will not burn brightly.
PLATE XXXI
THE HORSE CHESTNUT
The Horse Chestnut is not related in any way to the Sweet Chestnut;
there is no resemblance between them except the appearance of their
nuts, and even in these there are many points of difference. It is
said that the name Horse Chestnut was given because the nuts of this
tree were only fit for horses to eat, whereas the Sweet Chestnuts are
valuable as a food for human beings. Even horses will not eat the nuts
of the Horse Chestnut tree. You must not forget that if the Chestnut
is spoken of without an adjective, it is the sweet Spanish Chestnut
that has the right to the name, and is by far the more valuable tree.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXI
THE HORSE CHESTNUT
1. Horse Chestnut Tree in Autumn
2. Young Leaf
3. Full-grown Leaf
4. Sticky Bud in Leaf Scar
5. Flower Spike
6. Single Flower
7. Fruit in Case]
The Horse Chestnut (1) was brought to this country five hundred years
ago, and we prize it greatly for its beautiful flowers and leaves. It
has a large, stout trunk, covered with a rough, scaly bark, on which
you will frequently notice many green patches caused by a tiny plant
which makes its home there.
The branches are large and spreading, and they sweep downwards to the
ground, then rise again towards the tips, forming graceful curves. The
shoots bearing the buds always point towards the sky, and in spring
these shoots grow very fast for about a month, then they do not become
any larger, but the shoot thickens and is soon tough and woody.
All winter the Horse Chestnut buds can be seen on the tree--large,
dark, purply brown buds (4) covered with a thick coating of sticky gum.
In April these buds begin to swell and the gummy covering melts. It
held together twelve dark brown scales, and these fall to the ground,
showing an under layer of paler scales. The growing bud inside soon
pushes itself through these scales, and the young leaf appears, a
delicate, pale green bud, with its leaves closely folded like a fan.
They open very quickly in the warm sunshine, but for some days after
they have shaken themselves loose from the scaly coverings each leaf
(2) hangs on its stalk like a half-opened parasol, with all its tips
pointing to the ground. But soon the leaf tips rise, and the parasol is
fully opened and a beautiful leafy screen it is.
The leaf (3) is cut up into seven leaflets, and every leaflet is shaped
like a pear, with the broad part pointing outwards and the narrow end
joining the leaf stalk. These pear-shaped leaflets are not all the same
size; there are two which are quite small and two a little larger, and
the other three are larger still. The leaflets have small teeth round
their edges, and there is a raised rib running up the centre, from
which branches a network of fine veins all over the leaflet.
The Horse Chestnut leaves grow opposite each other in pairs, and each
pair is placed cross-ways to the pair farther down on the branch, in
the same way as those of the Sycamore. In July the leaves begin to
change colour; they turn red and brown, and they fall very early in
autumn. Look closely at the twigs and you will see on them many curious
marks shaped like horse-shoes; these are the scars (4) where a leaf
stalk joined the twig, and above each of these scars you can see next
year’s leaf bud already distinctly formed.
In May the Horse Chestnut is in flower (5), and a wonderful sight it
is; the tree is laden with snowy spikes, which look like great candles
set on a bushy Christmas tree. A giant’s nosegay, it is sometimes
called by the country people, this great tree, with its wealth of
fan-shaped leaves and these stiff snow-white spikes rising from every
branch.
The lowest flowers (6) in each spike open first, and they are called by
botanists perfect flowers, because each one has all its parts complete.
They have a green bell-shaped calyx with five divisions round the
mouth. Within this calyx are five separate white petals, one of which
is much larger than the others, and these petals have many hairs on
them and are splashed with crimson and yellow stains.
In the throat of this flower there are seven stamens with curved stalks
and pale salmon-coloured heads, and among these you can see a slender
curved green thread rising from the seed-vessel, which lies hidden in
the centre of the flower.
The upper flowers on the spike have no seed-vessel, and they fall off
as soon as their stamen dust is scattered. The spike may bear thirty or
forty flowers, yet only a few will remain to produce seeds after the
beautiful petals are withered.
When this has happened the seed-vessel grows larger and larger till it
becomes a rough, horny green ball (7) studded with short spines. It is
not bristly all over like the Sweet Chestnut fruit ball, but is hard
and smooth, and its spines are thick and clumsy, with a wide space
between each. If you open one of these balls before the fruit is ripe,
you will find a nut inside, which is white and polished like a piece of
ivory and which fits the covering closely. But if you leave the fruit
to ripen on the tree, then the green ball splits into three pieces, and
you see that the nut (7) inside has shrunk a little and has become a
rich, dark brown. It is so glossy that it looks as if it had just been
oiled, and it is almost round.
There is a white scar at the foot of the nut, where it was fastened to
the inside of the green ball.
In the Sweet Chestnut, you remember, there were always two or three
nuts inside each bristly ball, and these nuts were dull, and not glossy
like those of the Horse Chestnut.
Although horses will not eat this fruit, deer and cattle and sheep all
like it. In this country the nuts are usually left to rot on the ground
where they fall. After they decay these nuts may be pounded and made
into a kind of soap; they contain a juice which is said to be good for
cleansing.
The Horse Chestnut is a very fast-growing tree. In fourteen years a
tree grown from a nut will be large enough to sit under, and the wood,
on this account, is less hard and lasting than woods that have taken
longer to grow. It is used for cabinet-making and for flooring.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXII
THE CEDAR
1. Cedar Tree
2. Leaf Spray
3. Stamen Flower
4. Seed Flower
5. Closed Cone and Open Cone]
The tree does not produce any fruit till it is twenty years old, but
after that it will bear nuts yearly till it is two hundred.
There is a variety of Horse Chestnut with pink flowers, which has not
been so long known as the white-flowered tree.
PLATE XXXII
THE CEDAR OF LEBANON
In the Old Testament we read that when Solomon was building the temple
he sent to Hiram, King of Tyre, for stores of goodly Cedar wood from
the forests of Lebanon. And Hiram sent the wood by sea in floats, or
rafts, as much Cedar and timber of Fir as King Solomon wanted. This was
used to cover the stonework of the temple, within and without.
There is a delightful fragrance in these planks of Cedar wood which is
said to come from the sap or resin with which the tree abounds. Cedar
oil is made from this resin, and it was long in use as a safeguard
against the attacks of insects, which dislike the smell.
The Cedar (1), as we see it in this country, rarely rises to the
dignity of a large tree; it is most familiar to us as a stunted, bushy
tree with a thick, short trunk divided into more than one main stem.
Short branches rise from these stems, and at first these point upwards
to the sky, but after the branch has grown some length it bends
backward and stands straight out from the tree. From a distance the
tree looks as if the branches grew in layers, or shelves, with a clear
space between each shelf. You will always recognise a Cedar by these
layers of branches densely covered with gloomy green leaves. It is
said that in countries where much snow falls the Cedar branches always
remain upright, because the tree knows that it could not carry the
great weight of snow that would gather on its leafy shelves if they
grew flat as in warmer lands.
The Cedar is frequently found growing in churchyards, beside the Yew
tree, and a dark, gloomy tree it is. The trunk is covered with a thick
rough bark of a pale greenish brown colour, but on the branches this
bark is thin and flaky. The Cedar grows very slowly. The tree may be a
hundred years old before it produces any seeds, though you sometimes
find seedless cones on Cedars that are twenty-five to thirty years old.
The leaves (2) are evergreen, and usually remain on the twigs for
four or five years. They grow in tufts, like those of the Larch, on
the upper side of the twig; but each leaf is needle-shaped, as in the
Scotch Pine, and is much harder than the soft Larch leaves. In colour
they are a dark bluey green.
The Cedar has two kinds of flowers. Those that bear the stamens (3)
appear at the end of short, stunted little twigs which have taken many
years to grow. The stamens are in slender catkins, about two inches
long, and are a pale reddish yellow colour.
The seed flowers (4) grow in cones, and the Cedar of Lebanon has very
curious cones. They grow in pairs, and are like fat green eggs, sitting
upright on the branch, with the blunt end uppermost. These cones look
quite solid, because the scales are so tightly pressed together. You
can scarcely see where one begins and the other ends. It takes two
or three years before these scales unclose, and during that time the
cones (5) become a rich, dark purple. When the scales unclose, the
three-cornered seeds are blown out by the wind, and each seed is
furnished with a wing to float it away on the air. The Cedar cones
remain on the tree several years after all their seeds have fallen.
The timber of the Cedars grown in this country is of little value; the
tree is usually planted for ornament. But in warmer lands, where there
are large forests of mighty Cedar trees, the wood is sold for a great
deal of money.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.