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Carpinus turczaninowii Hance

Modern name

Carpinus turczaninowii Hance

A small tree to about 20 ft high in the wild state; young shoots slightly hairy. Leaves 114 to 2 in. long, ovate to broad-ovate, pointed, usually rounded at the base; margins double-toothed; dark green and soon becoming glabrous above, downy on the midribs and the veins beneath; stalk 13 to 12 in. long, downy; stipules narrowly linear, persistent during the winter. Fruit clusters 1 to 2 in. long; bracts ovate, unequal-sided, one side being sharply toothed, the other toothed only at the apex and with a small lobe at the base. Nut ovate, resin-dotted.

A native of N. China, where it is common in open woodland and scrub, and also of Japan; discovered by Turczaninow in 1831 but described from specimens collected ten years later by Kirilov. Farrer introduced it from Kansu in 1914 and trees from his seed are in cultivation at Highdown, Sussex, and at Kew. It makes a small, neat, bushy tree and colours rich brown and orange in the autumn. Mrs Farrer had at Ingleborough a shrubby pendulous form raised from the original seed; this is illustrated in The New Flora and Sylva, Vol. 3, fig. 99 (1931).

var. ovalifolia Winkler C. polyneura Burk., in part, not Franch. – A tree to 30 ft high in the wild state. Leaves ovate to ovate-oblong, sharply but only occasionally double-toothed. Bracts of fruiting catkins not lobed at the base. A native of W. China, introduced to Kew by Henry in 1889 from E. Szechwan. A tree from this seed now measures 38 × 134 ft (1967). It was originally thought to be C. polyneura Franch.



From the Supplement (Vol. V)

specimens: Kew, Broad Walk, pl. 1912, 28 × 214 ft (1981); Burford House, Dorking, var. ovalifolia, 40 × 312 ft (1984); Highdown, Sussex, 38 × 512 ft and another, pl. 1937, 33 × 312 ft (1983); Westonbirt, Glos., Morley Drive, var. ovalifolia, pl. 1923, 33 × 3 ft (1981).

Winkler and other students of the genus have remarked on the similarity of the involucral bracts of this species to those of C. orientalis, in that they are not markedly asymmetric and usually lack basal lobes. However, in C. turczaninowii the narrower side is normally less toothed than the other, and may have a lobe or infolding at the base.

† C. coreana Nakai C. turczaninowii sens. Winkler, in part, not Hance; C. paxiana sens. Nakai, not Winkler – Now in cultivation, this is near to C. turczaninowii, but with broader leaves. Native of south-west Korea; figured in Nakai’s Flora Sylvatica Koreana, Vol. 1, t. 17 (as C. paxiana).

Genus

Carpinus

Other species in the genus