THE CHESTNUTS CHINKAPIN. 89 



CHINKAPIN (Castanea pumila Miller).' 



The chinkapin may be best described as a dwarf chestnut. It is more or less 

 abundant on sandy knolls and hillsides along the Atlantic Seaboard from Delaware 

 to northern Florida, and westward across Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, Indiana, 

 Missouri, and Arkansas to eastern Texas. Botanists characterize it as a spreading 

 shrub or small tree having oblong, acute serrate leaves, downy beneath, and bearing 

 small, solitary ovoid nuts iu small involucres, often spiked. (See pi. 15, fig. 4.) 

 Through Virginia and Tennessee occasional trees are reported that are from 30 to 40 

 feet in height, having the leaf and fruit of the chinkapin, with the tree and fruiting 

 habit of the chestnut. These have been commonly regarded as hybrids, but from the 

 fact that this tree-form is the prevailing type through southern Missouri, Arkansas, 

 and Texas, it should probably be ranked as a botanical variety of the chinkapin. 

 The chinkapin nnt is smaller than the chestnut, but makes up for this defect, in part, 

 by its productiveness and earliness to ripen. It is the first ripe nut to reach the 

 market in the fall, and in consequence sometimes brings higher prices than chestnuts. 

 The acceptable flavor of the chinkapin seems to have been recognized by the aborig- 

 ines, for in his book Capt. John Smith says: "They have small fruit growing 011 little 

 trees, husk like a chestnut but with fruit like a very small acorn. This they called 

 Chechinquamins, which they esteem a great dainty." 



Though possessing the valuable qualities of dwarfish growth, earliness, and pro- 

 ductiveness, and yielding a nut of delicate flavor, there seems to have been but little 

 yet accomplished in the improvement of the chinkapin. The plant suckers freely, 

 and soon becomes a nuisance in cultivated ground, and the nuts are particularly 

 subject to damage by insects. The wide variation in individual trees of the species 

 would indicate that some valuable varieties may yet be found among the many 

 different wild types. An early ripening chinkapin as large as a small chestnut, and 

 as good as some of those that find their way into our city markets, would be a decided 

 acquisition, particularly if the tree was of fair size and free from the suckering habit. 

 There are indications that varieties possessing some of these qualities are already 

 known, and search for the trees bearing choice nuts may well be encouraged. There 

 is reason to believe also that as a stock upon which to graft the chestnut the stronger 

 growing chinkapin would be valuable to nut growers in the South, where the chestnut 

 does not succeed on its own roots. Several experiments in grafting and budding both 

 European and Japanese chestnuts on the common chinkapin in Florida, are reported 

 to be very successful. 



O. Bryant, of Longwood, Fla., set dormant scions from a 6-year-old Spanish 

 chestnut tree that had never blossomed in chinkapin stocks on which the buds were 

 just swelling in the spring, using only cotton dipped in beeswax to hold the grafts in 

 place. The grafts started and grew vigorously, blossomed, and one of them set a 

 cluster of fruit, afterward destroyed by twig girdlers, though the graft continued to 

 do well. 



C, Murdock, Sorrento, Fla., asserts that Japanese and Spanish chestnuts budded 

 on chinkapin make a growth of 3 inches in diameter in three years. 



John B. Carrin, of Taylor County, Fla., cut off young chinkapin bushes below 

 the surface and set grafts of Mammoth Japan chestnut when both stocks and scions 

 were dormant, using no protective covering but soil. He reports that 75 per cent of 

 the scions grew. 



1 Castanea nana, Muhlenberg, is segregated by some botanists as a very low growing form (1 to 4 

 feet) found in North and South Carolina, also in Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana. Its nuts are said 

 to be larger, though fewer in number than those of C. pumila. T. H. Kearney, jr., says of it (Bui. 

 Torrey Botanical Club, June, 1894, page 262) : " Diifers from C. pumila in the dwarf habit, broader 

 leaves, which are oblong or obovate-oblong and usually obtuse ; in the shorter, more rigid and more 

 spreading teeth; in the shining upper surface of the leaf and the more tawny hue of the down on the 

 lower surface and in the shorter petioles." 



