Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp / a kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes & fruites for meate or sauce vsed with vs, and, an orchard of all sorte of fruitbearing trees and shrubbes fit for our land, together with the right orderinge, planting & preseruing of them and their vses & vertues

Chap. XXIII.
Castanea Equina. The Horse Chesnut.

Although the ordinary Chesnut is not a tree planted in Orchards, but left to Woods, Parkes, and other such like places; yet wee haue another sort which wee haue noursed vp from the nuts sent vs from Turky, of a greater and more pleasant aspect for the faire leaues, and of as good vse for the fruit. It groweth in time to be a great tree, spreading with great armes and branches, whereon are set at seuerall distances goodly faire great greene leaues, diuided into six, seuen, or nine parts or leaues, euery one of them nicked about the edges, very like vnto the leaues of Ricinus, or Palma Christi, and almost as great: it beareth at the ends of the branches many flowers set together vpon a long stalke, consisting of foure white leaues a peece, with many threads in the middle, which afterwards turne into nuts, like vnto the ordinary Chesnuts, but set in rougher and more prickly huskes: the nuts themselues being rounder and blacker, with a white spot at the head of each, formed somewhat like an heart, and of a little sweeter taste.