{"product_id":"hybrid-chinquapin-chestnut-seeds","title":"Hybrid Chinquapin Chestnut Seeds","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(255, 42, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e***These seeds were harvested in September\/October, 2026.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(255, 42, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e \u003cspan\u003eSHIPPING RESTRICTION NOTICE: Due to quarantine restrictions on all chestnuts, we cannot ship these seeds to California, Oregon, and Washington. We are also not shipping them internationally. Orders to these places will be canceled, so please do not try.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCastanea\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e \u003cem\u003epumila \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ehybrids\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOrigin:\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eVarious\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eImprovement status:\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eBreeding population (cultivated, semi-domesticated, genetically diverse)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLife cycle: \u003c\/strong\u003ePerennial\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePricing:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e7 seeds for $15.75 ($2.25 each)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e20 seeds for $40 ($2 each)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe are beyond thrilled to be offering a very limited supply of hybrid chinquapin (or \"chinkapin\") chestnut seeds from three very special trees grown by Greg Miller of Empire Chestnut Company and Route 9 Cooperative in Ohio. Greg calls these three trees 'Super', 'Cove 1', and 'Jackson.' We don't know a ton about most of them, though we have the most to say about 'Jackson,' as you'll soon read below.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAllegheny chinquapins are small-seeded chestnuts native to the southeastern United States from Florida to New Jersey. While they are, like the more famous American chestnut (\u003cem\u003eCastanea dentata\u003c\/em\u003e), susceptible to the dreaded chestnut blight fungus (\u003cem\u003eCryphonectria parasitica\u003c\/em\u003e), chinquapins are far less susceptible, allowing them to reach maturity and bear nuts for many years. Before the arrival of the blight in 1904, chinquapin trees could reach sixty feet tall and a single trunk could live for hundreds of years and reach three or feet in diameter. Today, with blight impacting their growth, they typically only reach fifteen or twenty feet. They also grow more often with multiple trunks of different ages from the same root system (which is not impacted by the blight), so when the largest trunk eventually succumbs to the blight, others still remain. This is especially true when grown in full sun (the best choice if you want to get many nuts), while wild trees growing in the shade of a forest canopy may only have one spindly trunk at a time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChinquapin seeds are usually born singly in a small bur (though not always — we've seen up to three), with burs sometimes dangling together in long clusters of up to a dozen or so burs. The shiny seeds very much resemble small round acorns, but unlike their oak cousins, the nutmeat inside is sweet and delicious, even raw. The wild ones are quite small and fiddly, but they are so tasty that true aficionados don't mind sitting around cracking them open (very easy to do with teeth!). Many historical accounts exist attesting to the erstwhile popularity of Allegheny chinquapins, including oral history accounts among Indigenous peoples (which we have heard tell of, but can't reproduce here with any authority). Colonial accounts include that of William Strachey, secretary of the British Jamestown colony, who wrote in 1610 that local native people ate \"acorns, walnuts, chestnuts, chechinquamins [chinquapins], and fish...\", and the well-known colonizer John Smith, who documented that they were highly esteemed by Indigenous peoples, writing that \"They have small fruit growing on little trees, husked like a Chestnut, but the fruit most like a very small Acorne. This they call Chechinquamin, which they esteeme a great daintie... Of their Chestnuts and Chechinquamins boyled, they make both a broath and bread for their chiefe men, or at their greatest feasts.\" Below you can find in its entirety an article from an 1898 edition of Trenton [NJ] Evening Times, reprinted from the New York Sun, discussing the excitement occasioned by the arrival of some chinquapins at a New York market. The Encyclopedia of North Carolina records that \"in the early 1950s, it was possible to buy a bag of chinquapins at roadside stands in hilly, rural North Carolina counties such as Stokes and Surry. The bag was approximately the same size as a bag of peanuts sold at a ball game and usually cost a nickel.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe closely related Ozark chinquapin, found mainly in Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, has long been similarly revered. The University of Missouri published the following account collected by the Ozark Chinquapin Foundation in 2006 (said to be a quote from a then-85-year-old \"Missouri outdoorsman describing the trees before the chestnut blight reached the Ozark Mountains\"): \"The Ozark chinquapin nuts were delicious and we waited for them to fall like you would wait on a crop of corn to ripen … they were that important. Up on the hilltop the nuts were so plentiful that we scooped them up with flat blade shovels and loaded them into the wagons to be used as livestock feed, to eat for ourselves, and to sell. Deer, bears, turkeys, squirrels, and a variety of other wildlife fattened up on the sweet crop of nuts that fell every year. But, starting in the 1950’s and 60’ all of the trees started dying off. Now they are all gone and no one has heard of them. The wood produced some beautiful furniture and musical instruments, even today things made from the chinquapin wood are highly prized. Ozark people were able to make a little money selling railroad ties made from chinquapin trees. Farmers used the tree for corner posts and fence posts because it was highly rot resistant. Even the empty burs were used for fertilizer.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe are optimistic that these hybrids, as well as the pure native chinquapins (of each species) cultivated in optimal conditions, have the potential to become popular once again. Having tasted one of the hybrids ourselves (the 'Jackson'), and plenty of the pure wild nuts, we can say with assurance that they are truly delicious and well worth growing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBelow is some more information about the three trees that produced these nuts:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Super' is the only one whose DNA has been analyzed, so we can say with relative certainty that it is primarily Allegheny chinquapin (\u003cem\u003eCastanea pumila\u003c\/em\u003e) with some Japanese chestnut (\u003cem\u003eCastanea crenata\u003c\/em\u003e) — which is sometimes called Korean chestnut too. Here's what else Greg has to say about his \"super\" chinquapin: \"The tree is somewhat taller than typical chinkapins and it is highly blight resistant. Leaves and bur clusters look very chinkapin-like. Nuts are about twice the size of typical chinkapins, but still smaller than American chestnuts. It is surrounded by ([and therefore] pollenized by) other pure chinkapins or chinkapin hybrids. I think you'll find the offspring to be interesting. Amy says this is the future of chinkapins.\" We have heard of accounts of pumila x crenata hybrids being developed as a hedge against the blight as early as the 1910s, and an orchard in Linden, California, is said to have been planted in the 1960s with many Allegheny chinquapin\/Japanese chestnut crosses, so either of these may be involved in the pedigree of the 'Super' tree — but at this point we have no way of knowing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Cove 1' has fully unknown parentage, and may even be all chinqupin, but Greg thinks it's likely to be a hybrid. There are many naturally occuring hybrids between chinquapins and American chestnuts (\u003cem\u003eCastanea dentata\u003c\/em\u003e) out there, known in English as \"chinknuts\" (and \u003cem\u003eCastana x neglecta\u003c\/em\u003e in botanical Latin), so that is one possibility. Japanese\/Korean, Chinese (\u003cem\u003eCastanea mollissima\u003c\/em\u003e), European (\u003cem\u003eCastanea sativa\u003c\/em\u003e), or even Chinese chinquapin (\u003cem\u003eCastanea seguinii\u003c\/em\u003e) or Henry's chinquapin (\u003cem\u003eCastanea henryi\u003c\/em\u003e) are all possibilities too, as they are all capable of hybridization. It could also theoretically be a hybrid between Allegheny chinquapin and one of the other two native chinquapin species, the Ozark chinqapin (\u003cem\u003eCastanea ozarkensis\u003c\/em\u003e) or — far less likely — the rare and recently identified Alabama chinquapin (\u003cem\u003eCastanea alabamensis\u003c\/em\u003e), since hybrid vigor arising from a cross between two such small-seeded species could potentially result in a tree like 'Cove 1.' Greg tells us that \"the tree and bur clusters look very chinkapin-like but the nuts are relatively large, making me think it is a hybrid. It's not as old as the super chinkapin but it doesn't yet show blight.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd then there's 'Jackson.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs longtime followers of EFN likely know, our co-founder Nate Kleinman loves chinquapins. Since an old-timer in Salem, NJ, first tipped Nate off to the location of some local \"cheeky-pins\" over a decade ago, he's been borderline obsessed. Our awesome friend Eliza Greenman, another tree-crop-obsessive, introduced Nate to the work of the late Auzzville \"Auzzie\" Jackson, who was a patent lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, and a longtime member of the Northern Nut Growers Association (or NNGA, whose annual conference is where we've gotten to know Greg, as well as his apple breeding daughter Dr. Amy Miller). Auzzie Jackson was also obsessed with chinquapins. He even patented a chinquapin-shelling machine (US 8776677 B1).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA little more than an hour east of Richmond, along an old mill pond that drains into the Rappahannock River, Auzzie planted an entire orchard of chinquapins (with a couple rows of muscadine grapes and an arbor of hardy kiwi). Based on the account of an elder member of NNGA, Auzzie purchased a few dozen grafted plants of a likely hybrid chinquapin found in a grove around Tipton, Georgia. We haven't been able to find any other accounts of that original grove. But from visiting Auzzie's very overgrown orchard a few years after his passing, and in subsequent years, we've found four trees in the grove that still seem to be the original grafted trees, with large nuts born singly in each bur (see photo in Nate's hand, with the large hybrid nuts on the right and some smaller native nuts on the left). The graft unions eventually failed on most of the trees, so only the rootstock remains, and all of those rootstocks appear to be small pure types. But the four remaining grafts are extraordinary, especially one in particular that is tall and very productive. We are certain that the 'Jackson' tree Greg Miller is still growing comes from one of these trees (and we have one seedling ourselves, from a few nuts we collected a few years ago, but it hasn't reached maturity yet).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe are incredibly grateful to Greg for enabling us to offer these very special seeds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGROWING TIPS:\u003c\/strong\u003e Like all chestnuts, these seeds can not be allowed to freeze or dry out before planting. We recommend putting in a good growing medium (peat, potting soil, even sand) and kept moist and cold all winter, in the fridge. Seeds are likely to sprout under these conditions, or at least put out a root, which is fine and to be expected. The most important thing, both in the initial germination stage and for the first two years especially, is to protect the seeds and seedlings from predation. Small mammals relish these seeds as much as humans, and even the young roots of the trees, so growing them under 1\/2\" gauge metal hardware cloth or something similar is absolutely imperative. Trees started in containers should have at least a foot or two of space for the roots to grow, as they quickly produce a long, firm taproot. Plant trees in well-drained soil in a sunny location for best results, and protect from browsing deer until quite tall.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBelow is the aforementioned article from the third page of the Saturday, November 26th,1898 edition of the Trenton [NJ] Evening Times, which was reprinted from the New York Sun, attesting to the interest in the rare chinquapins at that time, just a few years before the blight hit. Please excuse the now-offensive terminology used by the authors in describing Black people (who are otherwise discussed with appropriate humanity). It provides a fascinating glimpse into history:\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Oh, look, Maria, chinquapins! I’ve never seen any in New York before. Doesn’t that make you think of the Black Mingo place and the old times?” and the fashionably attired matron, who had stopped her companion at the fruitshop window on Broadway eyed the little basket of shiny, pointed nuts with interest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Chinquapins! Why it’s like meeting old friends. Let’s order some set home for the children,” said the older woman, and the two passed into the shop.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Do chinquapins sell readily in New York?” repeated the nut dealer. “Well, they do and they don’t, or rather, they’re merely an experiment. I got hold of this consignment by chance, sent unsolicited by a friend who had come across the chinquapin in some of his explorations and had a small lot gathered this year for market. People buy them more on account of association than anything else. They are more delicate than the chestnut and of rare flavor, but too small for the candy and cake maker to bother with or to be used for the table. They are nice to nibble at in between times. I like them, although I didn’t know what they were at first until I read the letter that came along a day or two after the nuts. When I found that they were liked by Southern people I put them outside in the display of other nuts. I’ve had experiences before of how much people here in New York like the things they have been used to at home. Any number of strange West India and Bermuda fruits have caught on here in that way, novelties and slow sellers at first, but getting really popular after a season or two, like the alligator pear [chayote], for instance, or the liche nut [litchi].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“I’ve been amused somewhat at the attention those little chinquappins [sic] have attracted. Lots of people stop to look at them who don’t come to buy, and then again some of my best paying customers order them just as those ladies did just now. Invariably the buyers are people who have lived at some time down South and have seen the chinquapin growing or perhaps gone chinquapin hunting. The husband of one of those ladies bought a big rice plantation on the Carolina coast. They lived on it for a while and I believe be sunk a good deal of money in the venture. At any rate, she has Southern relatives and is fond of the country. The little negroes used to bring her the chinquapins at this time of year and she took an interest in them, both the nuts and the gatherers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Two or three days ago an old gentleman came in looking peased [sic] to ask where I got the nuts. He ordered three quarts and took some and put them in his pocket as though they were precious. He said the sight of them took him back forty years. He was born and brought up on a cotton plantation where the chinquapins grew wild in the woods, and he used to gather them every fall. They grow profusely on quite a large bush, and the outer one is as big as a walnut and covered with prickly spines that makes them all the harder to get at. The bush is very handsome, but grows usually in the most inaccessible places, out in the swamps and woods. I think they would repay cultivation, for the best of them are exceptionally sweet, tender and well-flavored.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Chinquapins have caught on in Philadelphia,”; said a wholesale nut dealer at headquarters down by the Washington Market, “ but they are practically unknown to New York. I had several lots consigned to me without previous notice, and no one of the dealers in this neighborhood knew what they were. All agreed that they were good. One day a darkey from New Jersey happened in. He takes a cart round the country peddling nuts and vegetables and is a good, square fellow to deal with.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“‘Chinquapins; where did you get them?’ he asked me on first sight of the open bags and he pounded on them just as a man greets an old, familiar friend. ‘I can sell every chinquapin of the lot to the colored people back in Jersey City,’ he told me, and backed his wagon up and bundled in the whole batch.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe chinquapin doesn’t need cooking like the chestnut to reduce it to toothsomeness. It is at its best when allowed to ripen thoroughly on the tree, or if packed too soon and only experience can determine the proper stage of maturity from the appearance of the outer coat, it will mellow if laid away in a dark, dry place where insects won’t breed. Nobody has ever tried to cultivate it; but just as it is the nut is prized by both whites and blacks in the region where it grows. —New York Sun\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Experimental Farm Network Seed Store","offers":[{"title":"7 seeds for $15.75 ($2.25 each)","offer_id":67717433720885,"sku":null,"price":15.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"20 seeds for $40  ($2 each)","offer_id":67717433753653,"sku":null,"price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2333\/6781\/files\/IMG_20191003_150531_430.jpg?v=1792502374","url":"https:\/\/store.experimentalfarmnetwork.org\/products\/hybrid-chinquapin-chestnut-seeds","provider":"Experimental Farm Network Seed Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}