As oke, firre, birche, aspe, elder, elme, poplere,
Willow, holm,[6] plane,[7] boxe, chesten, laure,
Maple, thorne, beche, awe, hasel, whipultre,[8]
How they were felde shall not be tolde by me.
The right English name is, therefore, "chesten"; modern usage has added "nut," which is as irrational as it would be to speak of a "hazel-nut" to indicate a hazel or a "fircone" to indicate a fir.
Shakespeare, of course, was quite familiar both with the tree and its fruit. Thus one of the witches in Macbeth:
A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap,
And mounched and mounched and mounched.
"Give me," quoth I.
"Aroint thee, witch!" the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Moreover, the chestnut had been long enough established in England to have its name borrowed to denote a rich shade of russet. So in As You Like It:
Rosalind. I' faith, his hair is of a good colour.
Celia. An excellent colour; your chestnut was ever the only colour.
The Spanish chestnut is essentially a southern growth, being found wild only in Southern Europe, Algeria, Asia Minor, and Northern Persia. It is remarkable, therefore, that it should thrive so well in the British Isles, even in the northern part thereof; for although, as aforesaid, it is shy of fruiting in Scotland, it grows to enormous proportions in that country.
Probably the tallest chestnut north of the Tweed is one at Yester, in East Lothian, which in 1908 measured 112 feet high by 18 feet 8 inches in girth. Next to it comes a fine tree at Marchmont, in Berwickshire, 102 feet high by 14½ in girth, with a clear bole of 32 feet. Still further north, there is a huge fellow at Castle Leod, in Ross-shire, which, though only 76 feet high, girths no less than 21 feet 4 inches at 5 feet from the ground.