Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/53

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Æsculus
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colour from yellowish to pink. The edges of the petals show a few glands and are tufted ciliate.

A considerable number of forms of this variety are known in cultivation in which slight differences occur in the length and shape of the petals. Æsculus Lyoni and Æsculus Whitleyi are apparently sub-varieties of this hybrid. The forms with red flowers are often known in gardens as Pavia rubra, a name which belongs properly to Æsculus Pavia.

Distribution

This tree occurs in alluvial soil of river valleys and on moist mountain slopes, from Pennsylvania southward to Georgia and N. Alabama; and westward to S. Iowa, Indian Territory, and W. Texas. Sargent says that when at its best on the slopes of the Tennessee and Carolina mountains, it sends up a straight shaft

sometimes free of branches for 60 to 70 feet, and reaches a total height of 90 feet. (A.H.)

Cultivation

According to Loudon this species was introduced into England in 1764, but though more common in cultivation than any Æsculus except A. Hippocastanum, and apparently not particular about soil, it does not attain any great size. It is perfectly hardy at Colesborne, and ripens fruit in most years, from which I have raised seedlings, which, however, do not grow so fast or well as those of the common horse-chestnut. A seedling raised from a tree at Tortworth in 1905 was 6 inches high in the first year, and some raised from seed which I gathered in the Arnold arboretum, which germinated earlier, were much injured by the frost of May 21–22.

At Syon there are two trees, probably of a great age, both grafted on the common horse-chestnut. One is 65 feet high by 4 feet 4 inches in girth; the other is 56 feet high by 6 feet 4 inches in girth, with a bole of 7 feet, dividing into three stems, which form a wide-spreading crown. A tree at Belton Park, Lincolnshire, was, in 1904, 50 feet high by 3 feet 4 inches in girth, with a fine straight stem, drawn up in a wood. Another, crowded by other trees near the Broad Water at Fairford Park, Gloucestershire, measures about 60 feet by 4 feet 5 inches. A selfsown seedling was growing near it in 1903. There is also a tree, measuring about

50 feet by 5 feet 6 inches, at Charlton Kings, near Cheltenham. (H.J.E.)

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