Chestnuts

We have a few Chestnut trees in our lawn and the recent heavy rain has caused the nuts to start dropping. These are Chinese Chestnut trees that we planted and not the American Chestnut trees that were nearly wiped out by chestnut blight 100 years ago. I do have one American Chestnut on our property that is barely surviving. Chinese Chestnut trees are resistant to the blight and people have been back-breeding Chinese chestnuts into American chestnut populations to confer blight resistance.



The Chestnut fruit (nut) is contained in a spiny (very sharp) "burr". The burrs contain one to four nuts and when they reach maturity, the burrs turn yellow-brown and split open in two or four sections to release the nuts. These burrs are so sharp they will penetrate heavy leather gloves.



Some of the Chestnuts I have collected this year. After they have dried I will plant them for wildlife habitat.



Prior to the chestnut blight there were nearly four billion American chestnut trees in North America and a main source of food for wildlife. Some of the local deer looking for chestnuts under the neighbor's tree.