Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/34

214 to move, even when five or six feet high. As the tree is liable to form large side branches, the buds should be rubbed off the stem early in order to form a clean trunk, though it bears pruning well as a young tree.

Though somewhat liable to suffer from cold winds and spring frost, which injure the foliage and flowers, the tree is hardier in this respect than many of our native trees, though coming from a warm southern country.

As regards the chemical nature of the soil it is quite indifferent, for though it grows faster on a good loam and does not come to perfection on sandy soil, it attains a large size on dry, rocky, calcareous soils, and even at an elevation of 800 feet and upwards resists wind better than many trees. I have seldom seen horse-chestnuts blown down, though large heavy branches are often torn off by violent winds.

As an ornamental flowering tree for parks, lawns, and avenues it has no superior, though on account of its branching habit it requires considerable attention in order to form tall shapely trees. Its principal defect is the tendency of the leaves to become brown and ragged early in the autumn, but they fall quickly, and being easily removed make less litter than the leaves of the beech, oak, or sycamore.

The large branches when allowed to rest on the ground in damp situations frequently take root and become naturally layered, the best instance of this that I have seen being at Mottisfont Abbey, Hants.

For town planting, on account of its beautiful flowers and dense shade during the hottest months, the horse-chestnut is perhaps, next to the plane, one of the best trees we have, and does not seem to suffer much from smoke. In parks it is valuable for its fruit, which are so much liked by deer that they are eaten as fast as they fall, and would perhaps be worth collecting for winter food.

The extraordinary hardiness of this southern tree is proved by the fact that it will grow to a large size as far north as Trondhjem in Norway, lat. 63° 26/, a tree figured by Schubeler near this place being 37 feet by 8 feet 9 inches. Another in the Botanic Garden at Christiania, which is considered the largest in Norway, measured in 1861, 16.62 metres by 2.45 metres, and when I saw it in 1903 had increased to no less than 28 metres high by 3 in girth, though it has been exposed to as low a temperature as –18" to –20° Réaumur.

As regards the age which the horse-chestnut attains we have few exact records, but it does not seem a very long-lived tree. J. Smith states that an avenue running south-east from the front of Broadlands House, near Romsey, Hants, was planted in 1735; but in 1887 only two trees remained, which were 11 feet and 12 feet 4 inches in girth.

There are so many fine trees in almost every part of Great Britain that I need not go into great detail as to their dimensions, but though it is possible that in

Bushy Park, or other places near London, taller trees exist, I have only at