f our best trees.

The butternut, or white walnut, has never seemed so interesting to me,
nor its fruit so palatable, probably because I have seen less of it. The
so-called "English" walnut, which is really the Persian walnut, is not
hardy in the eastern part of the United States, and, while a tree of
vast commercial importance in the far West, does not come much into the
view of a lover of the purely American trees.

[Illustration: The American sweet chestnut]

Of the American sweet chestnut as a delightful nut-fruit I need say
nothing more than that it fully holds its place against "foreign
intervention" from the East; even though these European and Japanese
chestnuts with their California-bred progeny give us fruit that is much
larger, and borne on trees of very graceful habit. No one with
discrimination will for a moment hesitate, after eating a nut of both,
to cheerfully choose the American native as best worth his commendation,
though he may come to understand the food value, after cooking, of the
chestnuts used so freely in parts of Europe.

[Illustration: Sweet chestnut blossoms]

As a forest tree, however, our American sweet chestnut has a place of
its own. Naturally spreading in habit when growing where there is room
to expand, it easily accommodates itself to the more cramped conditions
of our great woodlands, and shoots upward to light and air, making
rapidly a clean and sturdy stem. What a beautiful and stately tree it
is! And when, late in the spring, or indeed right on the threshold of
summer, its blooming time comes, it stands out distinctly, having then
few rivals in the eye of the tree-lover. The locust and the tulip are
just about done with their floral offering upon the altar of the year
when the long creamy catkins of the sweet chestnut spring out from the
fully perfected dark green leaf-clusters. Peculiarly graceful are these
great bloom heads, high in the air, and standing nearly erect, instead
of hanging down as do the catkins of the poplars and the birches. The
odor of the chestnut flower is heavy, and is best appreciated far above
in the great tree, where it may mingle with the warm air of June,
already bearing a hundred sweet scents.

There stands bright in my remembrance one golden June day when I came
through a gateway into a wonderful American garden of purely native
plants maintained near Philadelphia, the rock-bound drive guarded by two
clumps of tall chestnuts, one on either side,