Many years back I attended a funeral for my Uncle Bud Price. His given name was Arthur Benjamin, but for all my growing-up years we knew him as Uncle Bud or sometimes Uncle Arthur. My first name also happens to be Benjamin and that’s no coincidence seeing how I was named after him. He retired from ARMCO and spent many years living in the little village of Seven Mile just down US RT 127 in northern Butler County. I was surprised to learn at his funeral that most folks around Seven Mile just called him Art.

I happened to be in the mountains of West Virginia a few weeks ago and they were talking about paw paws and somehow the conversation turned to a Chinkapin bush. Around here, if someone mentions Chinkapin, my forester’s mind usually goes to Chinkapin (alternatively spelled Chinquapin) oak, a large member of the white oak family.

Being curious by nature and about nature, I had to ask more questions about this Chinkapin that was portrayed as neither a chestnut nor an oak. (Turns out it is a chestnut.) My source described it as a large shrub or small tree producing a small nut surrounded by a chestnut-like bur of sorts, using her fingertip to show the size of the nut.

Back at home, I pulled out a copy of Michael Dirr’s Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. Sure enough, Allegheny Chinkapin, or just plain Chinkapin, is a shrub that grows from 6 to 25 feet tall but can reach heights of greater than 50 feet under the right conditions. It is in the same genus as American Chestnut and produces a three-fourths to one-inch long, dark brown, sweet, edible nut, much smaller than the American Chestnut. The bur is rather prickly and contains only one nut per bur as opposed to American Chestnut which can have as many as three nuts per bur. The leaves are similar to American or Chinese Chestnut, only smaller. Allegheny Chinkapin grows from the north part of Florida to as far west as Texas and Oklahoma, extending north along the coast as far as Cape Cod, Massachusetts. My sources do not agree on whether or not it is resistant to chestnut blight, but it appears to me that it is indeed susceptible.

In my future travels in the mountains, I may have to follow up and ask what they call what we call Chinkapin oak, which according to my distribution maps grows in the same area as the Allegheny Chinkapin. I am not about to suggest that we all study basic Latin and start using scientific names for the species around us, though we could be much more precise with our plant conversations. But what fun would that be to be known by just one name? Just ask the folks who knew Uncle Bud.

Thanks to the USDA Plants Database and the American Chestnut Foundation for information contained in this article.

Reach BJ Price at 937-456-5159 for more information.