Foraging, Wildcrafting, and Wild Edible Plant Guide

Chestnut trees grow in temperate and tropical regions throughout the world, and is a genus of eight or nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs in the beech family. The American Chestnut tree could grow to ten feet in diameter and 100 feet tall and could live to be 600 years old. It provided food, shelter, beauty and income for many people in the Appalachians.

Its bark is smooth when young, of a vinous maroon or red-brown color for the American Chestnut, gray for the European Chestnut. With age American species’ becomes gray and darker, thick and deeply furrowed; the furrows run longitudinally, and tend to twist around the trunk as the tree ages – it sometimes reminds of a large cable with twisted strands. Castanea sativa male catkins (pale buff) and female catkins (green, spiny, partly hidden by leaves).

The leaves are simple, ovate or lanceolate, 4 – 12 inches long and 1.5 – 4 inches broad, with sharply pointed, widely-spaced teeth, with shallow rounded sinuates between.

The flowers follow the leaves, appearing in late Spring or early Summer or onto July. They are arranged in long catkins of two kinds, with both kinds being borne on every tree. Some catkins are made of only male flowers, which mature first. Each flower has eight stamens, or 10 to 12 for Castanea mollissima. The ripe pollen carries a heavy sweet odour that some people find too sweet or unpleasant. Other catkins have these pollen-bearing flowers but also carry near the twig from which these spring, small clusters of female or fruit-producing flowers. Two or three flowers together form a four-lobed prickly calybium which ultimately grows completely together to make the brown hull, or husk, covering the fruits.

Chestnuts can be found on the ground around trees

The fruit is contained in a spiny (very sharp) cupule 2 to 3 inches in diameter, also called “bur” or “burr”. The burrs are often paired or clustered on the branch and contain one to seven nuts according to the different species, varieties and cultivars. At around the time when the fruits reach maturity, the burrs turn yellow-brown and split open in 2 or 4 sections. They can remain on the tree longer than they hold the fruit, but more often achieve complete opening and release the fruits only after having fallen on the ground and is partly due to soil humidity.

The chestnut fruit has a pointy end with at the tip a small tuft called ‘flame’ in Italian, and a hilum – an oblong spot at the other end of the fruit. In many varieties the fruit is flattened on one or two sides. It has two skins. The first one, is a hard outer shiny brown hull or husk, called the pericarpus; the industry calls it ‘the peel’. Underneath the pericarpus is another thinner skin, also called “pellicle” or “episperm”. The pellicle closely adheres to the seed itself, following the grooves usually present at the surface of the fruit. These grooves are of variable sizes and depth according to the species and varieties. They can make the peeling in many cases difficult without the appropriate technique.

Cut an X into the top of each chestnut (the end with the little tuft of spikes on), and drop into a shallow panful of simmering water. WEARING RUBBER GLOVES, a minute or two later take two or three out with a slotted spoon. The shell peels down from the top, and if the skin doesn’t come with it, it will soon follow with a rub from your gloved fingertip. Don’t peel the shell right down to the bottom until you’ve done all four sides (you don’t want it to cool) and then rub any remaining skin off. Any skin caught in the folds can be tweaked out by a helper (non glove-wearing), or with a knife, or rubbed off gently with a toothbrush. If the nut cools down too much and the skin readheres, pop it back into the boiling water for 30 seconds.

The nuts go floury if they’re cooked for too long, so about six nuts at a time in the boiling water is about right so you can do two or three batches of peeling. It is still labour intensive, but you get beautifully clean nuts (matron), waste much less, and spare your fingers.

Ripe nuts are usually picked in autumn, although unripe nuts picked while green may also be used for food. Perhaps the easiest way to prepare them is to roast the ripe nuts in embers. Cooked this way, they are quite tasty, and you can eat large quantities. Another way is to boil the kernels after removing the outer shell. After being boiled until fairly soft, you can mash the nuts like potatoes.