CHESTNUT, chestnut, a genus of trees, and shrubs (Castanea) of the family Fagacere. The species are characterized by long male catkins and bristly ovaries (burs) which con tain rounded nuts. Three species are of wide economic use, their wood being used for many purposes, their bark for tanning and their nuts for food: In America the most important species is the common chestnut (C. dentata), which is a tall spreading tree often attaining a height of 100. feet and a girth of 10 or more feet in the forests, which are usually upon high gravelly or sandy land or mountain sides where clay and limestone are absent or in but slight evidence. Its range is from New Eng land to the high lands of Alabama and west ward to southern Michigan. During the dos ing half of the 19th century this species at tracted the attention of horticulturists, who have produced about a score of improved varie ties worthy of being cultivated for their nuts. The Japanese chestnut (C. crenata) has long been cultivated for its large nuts, which are produced by veryyoung trees and are highly prized for food. The trees are rather dwarf, compact and symmetrical, and free from the attacks of blights, qualities which, together with their ease of propagation, have com mended them to orchardists throughout the world. During the closing, years- of the 19th century it came into prominence in America. The European chestnut (C. saliva), a native of southern Europe, northern Africa and western Asia, is a large tree which forms great forests throughout its range. Its nuts are probably more widely used as food than those of either of the other species, being a principal article of diet in the western countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. In. America it has become
popular with orchardists on account of its large nuts. Of the three species the American pro duces the finest flavored nuts, but they are gen erally much smaller than those of the other two species.
Another American species is valued for its nuts. The chinquapin (C. punsila), which is usually less than 10 feet tall, but occasionally attains a height of 30 feet, or even more, is found from Pennsylvania to Florida and west ward to Indiana and Texas. It bears small ovoid pointed nuts about half the size of ordi nary American chestnuts. They are as yet little cultivated and have produced few varie ties.
The various species and their varieties are readily propagated from seed. The seedlings are, however, generally grafted with choice varieties, and when the grafted plants are one or two years old they are set in orchards and cultivated like other fruits or are allowed to care for themselves. In places where chestnuts grow naturally, the sprouts which arise from the stumps of felled trees are often grafted with European or Japanese varieties, and the land pastured with sheep. The principal enemy of the chestnut in North America is the chest nut bark disease, produced by a parasitic fun gus. This has caused the death of large forests of the trees in the northern portion of their range and threatens the destruction of all the native chestnut trees. So far, no wholly satisfactory method of fighting it has been dis covered.