Chrysolepis sempervirens
Sierra Nevada, Tulare Co.
June 2008
 

Chrysolepis sempervirens
Sierra Nevada, Kern Co.
Breckenridge Road

 

Trees and Shrubs of Kern County (Sep 2012)

Chrysolepis sempervirens (Castanea sempervirens Kellogg 1855) Hjelmquist 1960. Bush chinquapin. Shrubs varying in habit, from creeping along the ground in the high Sierra Nevada to upright shrubs in the Klamath Mts.; leaves broadly elliptical to slightly wider in the upper third, then slightly tapering to a round to slightly pointed apex, 3–4× as long as wide, 3–7.5 cm long, green above with impressed pinnate venation, golden below, slightly recurved along margins, on stalks (petioles) 10–15 mm long; flowering in the summer, flowers in ball like clusters, creamy white; fruit a spiny trymosum, the spines developing from the involucre enclosing 1–3 pericarpia, maturing the 2nd year, falling to the ground, opening by four valves, usually by squirrels, birds or insects for consumption of the pericarpia (“nut”) that encloses the seed(s).  Understory shrub of montane forests in southern and northern California to southern Oregon, absent from the southern Coast Ranges, 2,500–11,000 ft.  Bush chinquapin chaparral recognized in MCV2 when >50% relative cover. Type from near Mariposa, CA. Kern Co.: In dense colonies on the Kern Plateau, also in the Greenhorn Range, Piute Mountains, and on Breckenridge Mountain (Twisselmann), 1,584–2,529 m (CCH).