The Chestnut Tree or Plane Tree
Chestnut (Plane Tree)
Hebrew: armon
Platanus orientalis
Smith identifies this tree as plantanus occidentalis. Nelson says it grew to a height of 21-27 meters or 70-90 feet. Every resource I checked identified the "plane tree". This tree has rich green leaves similar to glossy vines. The fruits are small globes covered with little spikes. They are bountiful in Syria and Lebanon. The tree will flourish on the edges of streams or rivers. Used for its shade along the Mediterranean, it would have been quite common in ancient days. Walker writes that Socrates held audiences under them. Planes were planted in Athens and other parts of urbanized Greece. The Hebrew word for the tree means "naked" as in peeling off. Its bark will peel each year. Pliny wrote about the tree's tremendous size. Some have been estimated at about two thousand years of age.
Genesis 30:37 (KJV) And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree; and pilled white streaks in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.
Ezekiel 31:8 (KJV) The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.
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