Trees; bud scales, young shoots, and rachis of inflorescences grayish brown puberulent with small, lamellate, waxy scalelike trichomes. First-year branchlets thick, black-brown when dry, lenticellate; lenticels yellowish brown. Petiole 2-3 cm; leaf blade elliptic, sometimes obovate-elliptic, 26-45 × 8-18 cm, thinly leathery, abaxially midvein and secondary veins stellate puberulent and with small lamellate waxy scalelike trichomes when young, surface with a thick tight layer of lamellate waxy scalelike trichomes with age, buff when dry, base cuneate to rounded and often oblique, margin entire, apex obtuse to mucronate; midvein adaxially impressed; secondary veins 16-20 or more on each side of midvein. Female inflorescence ca. 28 cm; rachis densely tawny to dusky puberulent. Infructescence rachis 6-8 mm thick, sparsely lenticellate. Cupule subglobose, ca. 2.5 cm in diam., outside sparsely puberulent and with waxy scalelike trichomes, basally blackish brown, wall ca. 3 mm thick near base and ca. 1 mm thick near apex; bracts of young cupules spinelike, congested, yellowish brown when dry. Nut subglobose, 1 per cupule, ca. 1 cm in diam., pubescent when young. Fl. May-Jul, fr. following year.

May be the same as the earlier published Vietnamese Castanopsis chevalieri Hickel & A. Camus.

* Broad-leaved evergreen forests; 1100-1500 m. SE Yunnan (Pingbian Miaozu Zizhixian)