This is a large, mature tree growing near the highway on Nicomen Island east of Mission. It stands alone, about 50 feet high and has a profile something like an oak. I would like help in identifying it.
Might be a C. x blaringhemii 'Paragon' since it looks like it may have intermediate characters, and this was "the most widely planted nut cultivar" (Jacobson, North American Landscape Trees, 1996, Ten Speed, Berkeley) until 1907 or later - with other apparent examples being present in the region.
Thanks, Ron. I of course never heard of that cultivar, but I've found a couple of interesting articles from back east with descriptions and keys: The Identification of American Chestnut Trees: http://www.acffarms.org/papers/Chestnut Species ID - Key.pdf and Notes from American Chestnut Foundation meeting, articles starting on page 9 http://www.acf.org/pdfs/resources/journal/journ_vol5-1.pdf These both look as if they've been scanned into Word - they have that kind of formatting and character errors.
Actually isolated chestnut trees may often waste energy producing "blanks" year after year - if this tree has no partners nearby the burrs could be incomplete inside, with flat seeds or perhaps worse.
