Sweet chestnut
Castanea sativa
Family · Fagaceae · Harmless
_17-10-2021_(d.j.b.)_01.jpg){kind=link}
_24-10-2021_(d.j.b.)_01.jpg){kind=link}
The tree of the chestnut groves of Trás-os-Montes and Beira, planted two thousand years ago and still yielding. Recognised by its long toothed leaf and the spiny burs on the ground in November.
Uplands · Oak woods
Also known aschestnut, European chestnut
How to tell it
A long narrow leaf with big pointed teeth all along the margin, like a saw. Yellow catkin cords in summer, strongly scented. A long-spined bur holding two or three nuts.
What it is confused with
Horse chestnut
Aesculus hippocastanum
A confusion of names and fruit, and this one matters. Horse chestnut has a palmate leaf of five to seven leaflets and a bur with short thick spines holding one round nut, which is toxic. The true chestnut has a simple toothed leaf.
What it is for
The chestnut was the bread of the sierras before the potato, and remains a cash crop in the northeast. Roasted, boiled, in soup and as flour.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
No approved contributions for this entry yet.
Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.