Giant chinquapin
May 1, 2022 in a leaf a day, drawings
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6 comments
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May 2, 2022 at 1:17 pm
Karen Skold
Is this a CA native? I always appreciate knowing if one of the leaves you draw is a native plant. Thinking of you, I took pictures of fig leaves and leaves of an oak which I think may be Valley Oak (native). Would you like me to send them to you? Also, are you just doing tree leaves?
May 2, 2022 at 1:28 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Just trees. Sure, please send!
The Giant Chinquapin is native, not only to the region covered by the field guide, but to the Bay Area (it grown along the coast, from Washington to central CA), and I have never heard of it before.
May 2, 2022 at 5:44 pm
Erp
Apparently doesn’t grow in large quantities but can get quite big. The name chinquapin is derived from an Algonquian word (first recorded in English by the Jamestown settlers as Chechinquamins or Chechinquamyns though that was for a different but related species than the one you drew). The nuts can be eaten.
The scientific name “Chrysolepis chrysophylla” means something like golden scaled golden leaf (the underside of the leaf is golden in color).
Some places where it has been seen in San Mateo
https://www.calflora.org/entry/observ.html#srch=t&taxon=Chrysolepis+chrysophylla&cols=b&lpcli=t&cc=SMT&chk=t&incobs=f&cch=t&inat=r
May 2, 2022 at 5:52 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Oh, how interesting. It does sound Algonquin–not that I know much about Algonquin, but the place names where I grew up (Connecticut) are often from that language family, including Connecticut itself and the college my dad taught at, Quinnipiac. There’s an Allegheny chinquapin, and now I am wondering how two closely related species, the only two in their genus, came to be thousands of miles apart.
May 3, 2022 at 5:06 am
Erp
They aren’t in the same genus. There are two species in Chrysolepis both local to this area. The Allegheny chinquapin is Castanea pumila so in a different genus which is quite widespread in the northern hemisphere (it includes the chestnut). Both are in the family Fagaceae (oaks, chestnuts, beeches) though within that family fairly far apart genetically (Castanea is more closely related to the oaks [Quercus] than to Chrysolepis [at least in some studies]).
May 2, 2022 at 10:35 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Ah, thank you.