in the Caucasus. All the evidence goes to show that it is confined to northern Greece and Albania.
Heldreich states that the horse-chestnut was first found wild in Greece by Dr. Hawkins.[1] In his own travels in Greece in 1897 he observed it in many stations, all lying in the lower fir region, between 3000 and 4000 feet altitude, where it grows in shaded moist gulleys, in company with alder, walnut, plane, ash, several oaks, Ostrya carpinifolia and Abies Apollinis. These stations, situated in remote uninhabited spots, establish the fact that the tree is really wild. Plants introduced into Greece by the Turks are always found in the neighbourhood of towns. Whether the tree was known to the ancient Greeks is doubtful.
The horse-chestnut was first mentioned[2] by the Flemish doctor Quakleben, who was attached to the embassy of Archduke Ferdinand I. at Constantinople,—in a letter to Matthiolus in 1557. The latter received a fruit-bearing branch, and published the first description[3] of the tree as Castanea equina, because the fruits were known to the Turks as At-Kastane (horse-chestnut), being useful as a drug for horses. suffering from broken wind or a cough.
The tree was introduced into western Europe from Constantinople, the first tree being raised by Clusius at Vienna from seeds sent by the Imperial Ambassador, D. Von Ungnad, in 1576. This tree quickly grew, and was mentioned by Clusius[4] in 1601.
The horse-chestnut was introduced into France[5] in 1615 by Bachelier, who brought the seeds from Constantinople. Gerard mentions it in his Herbal of 1579, p. 1254, as a tree growing "in Italy and sundry places of the eastern countries"; and in Johnson's edition of this work, published in 1633, the tree was stated to be growing in Tradescant's garden at South Lambeth. It was probably introduced into England about the same time as into France. (A.H.)
Cultivation
No tree is easier to raise from seed than the horse-chestnut. Its large fleshy fruit are so little hurt by frost and damp that they germinate freely where they fall, and do not seem to be eaten by mice like acorns and beech-mast.
Seeds which have been exposed all winter germinate more readily in spring than those which have been kept dry, and should be sown early and covered with about two inches of soil.
Though it is advised by French writers that the extremity of the radicle should be pinched off before sowing in order to prevent a strong tap-root from forming, as is done in the case of walnuts and chestnuts, I have not observed that they suffer from removal if this is not done; and if transplanted at one or at latest two years after sowing there are abundance of fibrous roots which make the tree an easy one
- ↑ Sibthorp et Smith, Fl. Græcæ Prodromus, i. 252 (1806). Hawkins' observation has been disputed, as he records it from Pelion, where the tree does not, so far as we know now, occur wild. Orphanides was the first to establish beyond doubt that the tree is indigenous to the mountains of northern Greece. Cf. Grisebach, Vegetation der Erde, French ed. i. 521.
- ↑ Sibthorp et Smith, Fl. Græcæ Prodromus, i. 252 (1806). Hawkins' observation has been disputed, as he records it from Pelion, where the tree does not, so far as we know now, occur wild. Orphanides was the first to establish beyond doubt that the tree is indigenous to the mountains of northern Greece. Cf. Grisebach, Vegetation der Erde, French ed. i. 521.
- ↑ Matthiolus, Comment. in Dioscorid. Mat. Med. 211 (Venice, 1565).
- ↑ Clusius, Rar. Plant. Hist. 7 (1601).
- ↑ Tournefort, Relation d'un Voyage au Levant, i. 530 (1717).
