This is a post about which chestnuts you can eat and which ones you cannot eat.
To tell the difference between an edible chestnut (from Castanea Sativa) and a non-edible chestnut (Horse Chestnut or Buckeye) you need to take a close look at the pod that the chestnuts grow in. Once the chestnut (seeds) are out of their pods they can look very similar to each other.
The pod of the edible sweet chestnut has a sort of porky-pine look to it with thin needle like spikes that point out in all directions and form a sort of thicket where you cannot see anything but the spikes. These are green while the chestnuts are forming and then turn brown when the chestnuts are mature.
The chestnuts from a Horse Chestnut or Buckeye on the other hand have short bumpy spikes on a smooth ball shaped fruit where you can see the surface between the spikes. As you can see in these images there are a lot fewer spikes which are also shorter and less pointy than those of the edible chestnuts.
The leaves are also very different. Those of the Horse Chestnut and Buckey are palmate with five leaflets like the one in the image below.
22 comments:
I have the not edible chestnut on my backyard with red flowers. But I have never seen the edible one. What a nice furry shell. Thanks for sharing. Anna :)
Do you know if there are wildlife that have adapted to eating horse chestnuts. Logic would tell me there are.
Nice photos and descriptions for correct identification. Thanks
Bill www.wildramblings.com
From what I have read the "Conkers" (ie Horse Chestnuts) are eaten by deer and squirrels.
thanks for sharing guys! XX
Hi!
I also have noticed that squirrels will eat on the early buds of the Horse Chestnuts from a tree in my yard that was somehow planted 10 years ago by a squirrel.
Since then I have tried to duplicate planting the chestnut literally by the hundreds over large areas and not one survived.
I presently have three sapplings about four feet high at the base of the tree which I have to transplant.
Does anyone have any information on transplanting the sapplings or planting the nuts for future growth?
Thanks
Don
Get a pot, put some soil in pot above half way, stick conker in the pot, cover with a finger or thumbs depth of soil above conker. Then leave this to over winter in the pot outside, without a saucer underneath. Once spring arrives the seed should germinate, hopfully anyway. I have tried this as a child and it mostly works. I would make up a few pots just to be sure. and maybe put the pots in diffent locations see which one germinate the best.. Good luck :)
I sure am glad I checked this out! I moved to this house last year and discovered several chestnuts on the ground, under a tree in the front yard. I was thrilled because I LOVE roasted Chestnuts. Now, I have found from your descriptions that the species I have is the NON-EDIBLE kind! Darn it! They're Horse Chestnuts!
Hi my husband is a conker Freak!! he has been taking us out almost every day off he gets, to find a GOOD conker tree Known as (Horse Chestnut). He's trying to get some good big ones so he can teach his kids to play the conker game as he did as a child in england. Does anyone know where i can Find a really Big Conker tree in Oregon. and ends our madness search.
We have found some in Oregon but there too small we are looking for really big ones...in a park hopefully i hate the looks we get from home owners when my husband is out there picking up there conker nuts lol its a bit embarrassing, But i love him and im Dessprate to find him the perfect tree. PLEASE PLEASE HELP!!!!!!
Thanks for the information! You saved me from sending my parents some horse chestnuts to roast!
And here I thought chestnuts were chestnuts and could be eaten. My son-in-law told me they were horse chestnuts and don't eat them. I am glad I showed them to him first because we have a huge tree in our yard and they are BIG.
But why can't you eat horse chestnuts? Do they taste bad? Are they poisonous? What can I do with the bucket of them I've collected? Can they be dried and used for anything?
I live in N Portland, and there are both kinds everywhere. Just dropping on the streets and being run over. (It's early Oct) Glad to now have this info. Do I have to roast the chestnuts before I eat them? I'm recently unemployed and so glad to find a free source of protein. Nuts always cost so much, no matter what kind.
I´m note sure if Sweet Chestnuts can be eaten raw or not but they are very tasty roasted. Just remember to make a small cut in the outer skin before roasting because if you don´t the Chestnut can explode in the oven. By oven I mean heat oven using the broiler function with the Chestnuts about 2-3 inches from the heat. You can also cook them in a BBQ over hot coals.
I have collected a whole bag of horse chestnuts (thinking that they were sweet chestnuts) from Harvard Yard and cooked them at home. I ate one. Actually, just a tiny bite because it was extremely bitter.
Yes, they are poisonous because I threw up.
Only then I found your blog......too late!
The local Indians had a process for making acorns edible, by leaching out the poisonous chemical in the acorn with several months of in-ground water circulation through their baskets of acorns.
The horse chestnut is not a native tree, and I don't know if the indigenous European tribes had a method of processing the nut to make it edible...
At any rate, as a Portland native myself, it always surprised me that people would waste space planting horse chestnuts when they could have planted edible American chestnut trees instead, and enjoyed a wonderful harvest for very little effort!
I picked up some chestnuts from Leif Erickson Dr (in Forest Park in N. Portland) near 1.25mi marker. There are lots of them on the ground. But I believe these are the bitter ones. I hesitate to try them
Thanks for this site. I've just been out forraging in our local wood in cornwall and found lots of chestnuts. Unsure if they were edible or not I thought I'd better look it up. Yummy!! Mine are edible. Will be roasting them later!!
Is there any edible spieces that grow in Great Britain? Info would settle an arguement.
Simon...The "Edible Sweet Chestnut" is grown in Great Britain as well as the "Common Horse Chestnut". Check out this Wikipedia article for confirmation of this (1st paragraph under "Uses")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Chestnut
Love the fact the pictures were so good...made telling the difference so much easier than just a discription! Unfortunately i have the Horse Chestnut trees in my yard...the deer love them though!
"CHESTNUTS ROASTING ON AN OPEN FIRE" IS A GREAT PHRASE IN A POPULAR CHRISTMAS SONG, BUT IF YOU WANT REALLY GOOD TASTING CHESTNUTS, DO NOT ROAST THEM, you will always get a burnt taste and often wind up eating some of the inner skin which is "fuzzy" and bitter tasting and you will join the ranks of many who say, "I tasted chestnuts, but did not really like them". IF YOU TRULY WANT TO ENJOY CHESTNUTS, (and they are very enjoyable) BOIL THEM; peel them, then serve them reheated in your micro-wave (or fry pan) with a little butter and salt on them. Cut a slit in the shells before boiling them for 12 to 15 minutes. Put only about 3 handfuls of nuts on to boil at a time. Shell them while they are still very hot and remove that inner skin as well. This is no job for sissies. Your hands will be in pain from the heat, but the effort will be well worth it. (It helps a lot if you use a pair of those gloves with rubber coated fingers and palm on the hand in which you hold the chestnut). After they are cooked you still need to keep them very hot to make them easier to peel. Keep them on the stove on the lowest heat. Remove only 3 nuts at a time. If you let them cool too much the shells become hard again and difficult to peel. The best tool is the shortest bladed pearing knife that you can find. I mean only a 2 incher if you can find one. Sometimes the inner skin will be very hard to remove. It is helpful if you return that one to the pot to soak that skin more. Also in many of the nuts there will be "fizures" into which that inner skin grows and is very difficult to remove. It helps a great deal if you just split the nut at that fizure to remove the skin. (A large percentage of your peeled nuts will not be whole). The reason for boiling only 3 handfuls at a time is because over cooking them makes them turn almost to a powder when you try to peel them. DO NOT BE ALARMED IF YOU FIND A WORM. WORMS ARE WHAT POLLINATE THE CHESTNUTS TO MAKE THEM GROW. Usually the worm will be just inside the pointed part of the nut, but sometimes it could be all the way into the center. Just cut it out, don't tell your guests about it, and pretend it never was there. I have developed this method, with revisions, over a 40 plus year period. I am the only one in my family that will go through the effort to cook and peel chestnuts, but my family would go nuts if I did not do it for every Thanksgiving meal. It is best to buy all the chestnuts you want very early in the season, starting with Thanksgiving and not later than the 3rd week in December. The longer in the season you wait the more bad nuts you will get. I always buy lots; cook them; peel them; then freeze them. They will taste just as good when you pull some out of the freezer in the middle of the next summer as they will when eaten freshly cooked. A WORD OF CAUTION, DO NOT TRY TO COOK CHESTNUTS IN THE SHELL IN THE MICRO-WAVE! THEY WILL EXPLODE! TRY THEM! YOU WILL LIKE THEM!
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