Castanopsis, Spach. Name derived from _Castanea_, the chestnut. Order, _Cupuliferæ_. A genus of evergreen shrubs and trees, intermediate between the oaks (_Quercus_) and the chestnuts (_Castanea_). There are about a dozen species indigenous to Eastern Asia and the adjacent islands. Blume, in "Flora Javae," Vol. II, 1828-36, describes three species under _Castanea_, which he found in the mountains and more elevated regions of the Javanese islands. Very little, however, is known of these oriental evergreen chestnuts outside of the herbariums of professional botanists, and they are rarely referred to, even in standard botanical dictionaries, or dictionaries of gardening, and when mentioned they are usually placed in the genus _Castanea_. Edouard Spach, a half-century or more ago, gave a synopsis of the genus, for which he proposed the name of _Castanopsis_, and although not recognized by botanists in general for a number of years, it is now accepted by botanical authorities everywhere. We have but one indigenous species, and this on the Pacific coast, viz: [Illustration: FIG. 10. LEAVES AND NUT OF CASTANOPSIS CHRYSOPHYLLA.] _Castanopsis chrysophylla_, A. de Candolle. _Castanea chrysophylla_, Douglas. _Castanea sempervirens_, Kellogg. "Leaves coriaceous, evergreen, lanceolate or oblong, one to four inches long, acuminate or only acutish (Fig. 10), cuneate at base and shortly petioled, entire green and glabrous above or somewhat scurfy, densely scurfy beneath, with none or few yellow scales; male aments one to three inches long, densely pubescent; styles three, stout, glabrous, divergent; fruiting involucre with stout divergent spines (Fig. 11) one-half to one inch long, subverticillately many branched; nut usually solitary, obversely triangular, six lines long."--"Geological Survey of California," Botany, Vol. II, p. 100. "This handsome broad-leaved evergreen tree is indigenous to the elevated regions, from Monterey, California, northward to the Columbia river in Oregon. It is also common in the Sierra Nevadas at elevations of six thousand feet, but in its southern limits rarely below ten thousand feet elevation."--C. S. Sargent ("Woods of the United States"). In the warmer and drier regions of California it is a mere shrub two to six feet high, and these dwarf forms have, in some instances, been described as varieties. As, for instance, _Castanea chrysophylla_, var. _minor_, Bentham; _C. chrysophylla_, var. _minor_, A. de Candolle; and _C. chrysophylla_, var. _pumila_, Vasey. But northward, where the climate is more moist, it becomes a large tree fifty to one hundred and twenty feet high, with a stem two to three feet in diameter. In its wide variation in habit of growth, this western chinquapin is similar to our Eastern dwarf chestnut, which is mainly a low shrub in the more Southern States, but becomes a fair-sized tree in the Middle States, or near its northern limits.