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.
20 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
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