Images of edible sweet chestnuts

These images are of edible sweet chestnuts from the Castanea sativa tree species.   To compare these with non-edible chestnut follow this link.

Walk though a Chestnut grove in November

 In went for a walk today with some friends though a Sweet Chestnut grove about an hours drive west of Madrid, Spain.

 Most of these images speak for themselves.  The image above stood out to me as the eight tree trunks were all growing out of the cut stump of one old Chestnut tree.

 This man in this picture was raking the leaves into piles and then burning them.  An occasional sweet chestnut would end up in the fire which would send out a muted popping sound every 10 to 15 seconds.

 This family was busy collecting the sweet chestnuts, filling large sacks and getting them ready to go into town to sell.

This just stood out to me as a pleasant country fall scene.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them!

Non-edible Chestnuts

 This is the time of year that I get a lot of comments on my post "Edible chestnuts vs. Horse chestnuts" with all kinds of stories people who have tried to eat Horse Chestnuts thinking that they were edible chestnuts.  The images here are of the NON-EDIBLE Horse Chestnuts. 

Anne Frank´s Horse Chestnut tree blown down in storm

The famous Horse Chestnut tree that Anne Frank described in her dairy while she and her family were hiding from the Nazis during the second world war has been knocked over in a storm.  The tree in Amsterdam has been called "Anne Frank´s tree".  The tree was about 150 years old and had survived pests, disease and many previous storms.  The image above gives a pretty clear idea of how badly damaged the tree is.

Edible Chestnuts vs. Horse Chestnuts

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 "porcupine" look to it with thin prickly 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.  Handling these pods without gloves can be quite tricky.

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.

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Over the years I have deditated countless hours to searching for interesting trees and blogging about specific tree related information.  Part of what motivated me was a love for photography and the joy of being out in nature surrounded by beauty.  Now both of my son's have taken up an interest in photography and my oldest son just started his own photography website.

Edible Sweet Chestnut tree - Castanea Sativa

The Sweet Chestnut is the tree that edible Chestnuts come from. The species name is "Castanea Sativa" and it is a tree that is native to Southern Europe. This tree should not be confused with the Common Horse Chestnut which has a similar shaped "fruit" that is NOT edible. The images in this blog post were taken at a very large Sweet Chestnut tree in Southern Spain that is called the "Castaño Santo de Istan". In the fourth image down in this post there is a picture of my son in the tree that gives an idea of its size.

The leaves of the Sweet Chestnut are elliptical with serrate margins and pinnate venation. They measure about 5-7 inches long and about 2-3 inches wide. The edible part of the chestnut is enclosed in a "porky pine like" casing that splits open when mature revealing the nut inside.

Sacred Chestnut of Istan

The tree above is the largest Sweet Chestnut that I have seen. It´s trunk is 46 feet in circumference at the base. It is estimated to be between 800 and 1,000 years old.

The bark of the Castinea sative can be quite different depending on the maturity of the branch or trunk. The image above contrasts the very young bark and very mature bark.

Every winter in Spain, usually around Christmas, it is common to come across street vendors, like the one below, that roast fresh Chestnuts and sell them. The Chestnuts are roasted barbecue style in a drum over hot coals. The sweet, nutty smell of the roasting Chestnuts fills the cool air and is almost irresistible to the passerby.