Leaves oblong-obovate to elliptic, acute, acuminate or rounded at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate or rounded at base, irregularly sinuate-toothed with apiculate teeth, hoary tomentose below when they unfold, soon glabrous with the exception of the last leaves of vigorous summer shoots, and at maturity thin, glabrous, dark green above, light green and lustrous below, 3′—4′ long and 1′—1¾′ wide; petioles stout, glabrous, about 1/12′ in length. Flowers: staminate aments pale pubescent, 4′—5′ long; androgynous aments pubescent, as long or rather longer with ten or twelve involucres of pistillate flowers below the middle, often only the lowest being fertilized. Fruit: involucre 1-seeded, subglobose to short-oblong, pale tomentose, ¾′ to 1¼′ in diameter, covered with stout pubescent scattered spines divided at base into numerous branches; nut ovoid, terete, acute, dark chestnut-brown, lustrous, ½′ to nearly ¾′ in length.
A tree occasionally 40°—45° high, with a tall trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, small irregularly spreading branches forming a narrow head, and slender glabrous or rarely pilose red-brown branchlets; more often a shrub sometimes with broader obovoid leaves sometimes puberulous on the lower surface.
Dry sandy soil; coast of North Carolina, near Wrightsville, New Hanover County; Dover, near the Ogechee River, Screven County, Georgia; Jacksonville, Duval County, and Panama City on Saint Andrew’s Bay, Bay County, Florida; near Selma, Dallas County, Alabama; and Covington, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana.
A tree only on the shores of Saint Andrew’s Bay.
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.
