In suitable situations the Chestnut is of larger proportions and greater length of life even than the Oak. In the South of England it will attain a height of from sixty to eighty feet in fifty or sixty years, and if growing in deep porous loam, free from carbonate of lime, and sheltered from strong winds and frosts, it builds up an erect massive column. Hamerton has said of such a tree: "His expression is that of sturdy strength; his trunk and limbs are built, not like those of Apollo, but like the trunk and limbs of Hercules." Under less suitable conditions the undivided trunk is little more than ten feet long; then it divides off into several huge limbs, and so the general character of the tree is altered, and it presents much the appearance of having been pollarded. The branches have a horizontal and downward habit of growth, the extremities of the lowest ones often being but little above the earth. The fine elliptical leaves are nine or ten inches in length, of a rich green, that is enhanced by the polished surface, which "brings up" the colour. Their edges are cut into long pointed teeth. Towards autumn they pale to light yellow, and then deepen into gold on their way to the final brown of the fallen leaf, which, by the way, is a great enricher of the soil where the Chestnut is grown.
The flowers, though individually small and inconspicuous, are rather striking, from their association in cylindrical yellow catkins, about six inches long, which hang from the axils of the leaves. The upper part of this catkin consists of male flowers, each with
a number of stamens enclosed in a perianth or calyx of five or six green leaves. The female flowers, on the lower part of the catkin, are two or three together, in a prickly four-lobed "cupule," or involucre, and consist each of a calyx closely investing a tapering ovary, whose summit bears from five to eight radiating stigmas, the number corresponding with the cells into which the ovary is divided. Each cell contains two seed-eggs, but as a rule only one in each flower develops. As development of the ovary and seeds progresses, the cupule also grows, and ultimately entirely surrounds the cluster with the hedgehog-like coat in which the nuts are contained when ripe. Then it splits open
and discloses the two or three glossy brown nuts. The Chestnut is in flower from May to July, and the nuts drop in October. They form an important article of food in South Europe, where they are produced in abundance, and there can be little doubt that the importers of the tree to this country believed it would prove equally valuable here. Evelyn had this in mind when he recommended the nut as "a lusty and masculine food for rustics at all times, and of better nourishment for husbandmen than cole and rusty bacon." Well, there is plenty of Chestnut grown around Evelyn's estate at Wootton to-day, but it is chiefly as coppice, to provide hop-poles, and hoops for barrels, for which purpose the long straight shoots are split in two. Grown as coppice, the Chestnut also provides fine cover for pheasants and other game. The trees begin to bear when about twenty-five years old, and from thence on to the fiftieth or sixtieth year the timber is at its best, but later it develops the defect known as "ring shake," and becomes of little use. That is probably why one meets with so many hollow wrecks of what were once noble Chestnuts.