3. CASTANOPSIS Spach.
Trees, with scaly bark, astringent wood, and winter-buds covered by numerous imbricated scales. Leaves convolute in the bud, 5-ranked, coriaceous, entire or dentate, penniveined, persistent; stipules obovate or lanceolate, scarious, mostly caducous. Flowers in 3-flowered cymes, or the pistillate rarely solitary or in pairs, in the axils of minute bracts, on slender erect aments from the axils of leaves of the year; the staminate on usually elongated and panicled aments, and composed of a campanulate 5 or 6-lobed or parted calyx, the lobes imbricated in the bud, usually 10 or 12 stamens inserted on the slightly thickened torus, with elongated exserted filiform filaments and oblong anthers, and a minute hirsute rudimentary ovary; the pistillate on shorter simple or panicled aments or scattered at the base of the staminate inflorescence, the cymes surrounded by an involucre of imbricated scales; calyx urn-shaped, the short limb divided into 6 obtuse lobes; abortive stamens inserted on the limb of the calyx and opposite its lobes; ovary sessile on the thin disk, 3-celled after fecundation, with 3 spreading styles terminating in minute stigmas, and 2 ovules in each cell attached to its interior angle. Fruit maturing at the end of the second or rarely of the first season, its involucre inclosing 1—3 nuts, ovoid or globose, sometimes more or less depressed, rarely obscurely angled, dehiscent or indehiscent, covered by stout spines, tuberculate or marked by interrupted vertical ridges; nut more or less angled by mutual pressure when more than 1, often pilose, crowned with the remnants of the style, marked at the base by a large conspicuous circular depressed scar, the thick shell tomentose on the inner surface. Seed usually solitary by abortion, bearing at apex the abortive ovules; cotyledons plano-convex, fleshy, farinaceous.
Castanopsis inhabits California with two species, and southeastern Asia where it is distributed with about twenty-five species from southern China to the Malay Archipelago and the eastern Himalayas. Of the California species one is usually arborescent and the other Castanopsis sempervirens Dudley is a low alpine shrub of the coast ranges and the Sierra Nevada.
Castanopsis from κὰστανα and ὄψις, in allusion to its resemblance to the Chestnut-tree.
1. [Castanopsis chrysophylla] A. DC. Chinquapin. Golden-leaved Chestnut.
Leaves lanceolate or oblong-ovate, gradually narrowed at the ends or sometimes abruptly contracted at apex into a short broad point, entire with slightly thickened revolute margins, when they unfold thin, coated below with golden yellow persistent scales and above with scattered white scales, at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, 2′—6′ long, ½′ to nearly 2′ wide, with a stout midrib raised and rounded on the upper side; turning yellow at maturity and falling gradually at the end of their second or in their third year; petioles ¼′—⅓′ in length; stipules ovate, rounded or acute at apex, brown and scarious, puberulous, ¼′—⅓′ long. Flowers appearing irregularly from June until February in the axils of broadly ovate apiculate pubescent bracts on staminate and androgynous scurfy stout-stemmed aments 2′—2½′ long and crowded at the ends of the branches; calyx of the staminate flower coated on the outer surface with hoary tomentum, divided into broadly ovate rounded lobes much shorter than the slender stamens; calyx of the pistillate flower oblong-campanulate, free from the ovary, clothed with hoary tomentum, divided at apex into short rounded lobes, rather shorter than the minute abortive stamens; anthers red; ovary conic, hirsute, with elongated slightly spreading thick pale stigmas. Fruit ripening at the end of the second season, involucre globose, dehiscent, irregularly 4-valved, often slightly shorter than the nuts, sessile, solitary, or clustered, tomentose and covered on the outer surface by long stout or slender rigid spines, 1′—1½′ in diameter, containing 1 or occasionally 2 nuts; nuts broadly ovoid, acute, obtusely 3-angled, light yellow-brown and lustrous; seeds dark purple-red, sweet and edible.
A tree, 50°—100° high, with a massive trunk 3°—6° in diameter, frequently free of branches for 50°, stout spreading branches forming a broad compact round-topped or conic head, and rigid branchlets coated when they first appear with bright golden-yellow scurfy scales, dark reddish brown and slightly scurfy during their first winter, and gradually growing darker in their second season; often much smaller and sometimes reduced to a shrub, 2°—12° high (var. minor A. De Candolle). Winter-buds fully grown at mid-summer, usually crowded near the end of the branch, ovoid or subglobose, with broadly ovate apiculate thin and papery light brown scales slightly puberulous on the back, ciliate on the scarious often reflexed margins, the terminal about ¼′ long and broad and rather larger than the often stipitate axillary buds. Bark 1′—2′ thick and deeply divided into rounded ridges 2′—3′ wide, broken into thick plate-like scales, dark red-brown on the surface and bright red internally. Wood light, soft, close-grained, not strong, light brown tinged with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood of 50—60 layers of annual growth; occasionally used in the manufacture of ploughs and other agricultural implements.
Distribution. Skamania County, Washington, valley of the lower Columbia River, Oregon, southward along the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains, and in California along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and through the coast ranges to the elevated valleys of the San Jacinto Mountains, sometimes ascending to altitudes of 4000° above the sea; of its largest size in the humid coast valleys of northern California.
Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of temperate Europe.