TRUNK OF A YOUNG BEECH
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The purple beech is a variety of this tree, which has been propagated from the original sport found in a German forest over a hundred years ago. Plants from the seeds of the purple beech have a tendency to revert to the original green, and to insure its peculiar colored foliage gardeners perpetuate it by layers. It is a highly artificial tree, and unless it is carefully placed in appropriate surroundings its effect is far from pleasing.
Chestnut Castanea dentata
One of the largest of our forest trees. The bark is dark hard, and rugged, with coarse ridges on old trees. Light brown buds. Alternate leaf-scars. Recent shoots are coarse and channelled with two grooves running down from the base of each leaf-scar, closely set with white or gray dots. Fruit ripe in October.
At all times a giant among trees, the chestnut seems perhaps most remarkable in winter when the massive trunk and lofty branches can be fully appreciated. There is much beauty in the bark of this tree, the fissures sweep boldly up and down the trunk with broad, smooth spaces between the furrows and give a most pleasing impression.
It is interesting to find that the chestnut is one of the exceptions in nature to the rule that every tree has an unvarying mathematical arrangement of leaves on the stem. This regular distribution of leaves on the stem to economize space and light is called phyllotaxy, and different trees follow various systematic arrangements. When the leaves or leaf-scars are alternate on the stem, as they are in those of the chestnut, the arrangement is spiral and one leaf follows another up the stem in ranks of two, three, five, or more in definite order according to the kind of tree. In the chestnut, however, the phyllotaxy is frequently variable in different twigs of the same tree, and it follows an unruly, wayward leaf arrangement.
The wood of the chestnut is light, soft, and not strong, but it is used for making cheap furniture. It is also made into rails, posts, and railroad ties, as it is durable when used in contact with the soil. The nuts are sweet and edible and have great market value. The trees bear fruit when they are very young, and some Western farmers find that orchards of these trees bring better returns than the same amount of land in farm products.
The chestnut is closely allied to the sweet or Spanish chestnut of Europe. The nuts of the American species are sweeter than those of the Spanish chestnut, but they are much smaller. From a French experiment it was found that the kernel of the chestnut yields sixteen per cent of good sugar.
