Where to find chestnut trees

What remains of the original chestnut forest exists today as wood in houses, barns and furniture. As the trees died out, they were logged and many of the areas of the country that were built during the s were constructed of chestnut lumber. Today it is hard to find chestnut wood — it has to be obtained from salvagers and recyclers from old buildings being torn down.

America today is the only country in the world that can grow chestnuts that does not have an extensive chestnut industry. This is in great part due to the loss of the American chestnut.

Unless you are of recently European or Asian heritage, chestnuts have become lost in our memory. Americans have not grown up with chestnuts as part of their food culture.

Today, we at Chestnut Hill Outdoors, have cultivars of chestnuts that allow the establishment of an American chestnut industry, and access to unique products made with chestnuts. We are at a time of rebirth of chestnut as an important food and wildlife tree for North America again.

Chestnut has been called the Bread Tree — it has a been staple in the diet for people all over the world for thousands of years. It is a very high quality food source, with the nutritional makeup of a grain, yet grows on a tree, without annual tillage of the soil, and can bear crops for s of years. Chestnuts are very low in fat and have no cholesterol. The protein is very high quality, with an amino acid balance similar to milk or egg, both of which are considered the perfect protein.

They contain high amounts of Tryptophan, Isoleucine, Lysine, linoleic acid and sulfur-containing amino acids. Chestnuts are also gluten free, and can be incorporated into many foods as a gluten free flour substitute. For more information on chestnut nutrition, click here. The American Heart Association promotes a high carbohydrate, low fat, low sodium diet as a principal defense against heart disease.

Until the introduction of the potato and maize from the New World, entire communities depended on chestnuts as a primary source of food and carbohydrate. It was a staple in their diet, being eaten fresh after harvest, then the stored ones were consumed, then the dried chestnuts, and finally the sweet tasting flour, added to soups, stews, polentas, and made into cakes and breads. Dried chestnuts will last a year, providing food all the way to the next harvest.

They were also fed to animals, and the rot-resistant wood was used in building everything from fences to vineyards to houses and barns. Chestnut was survival for the peasants during bad economic times.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, during the Middle Ages, and during the Great War and World War II, chestnuts were critical for the people of the mountains, providing a very valuable source of carbohydrate. It is only recently, with the movement of families into the industrialized cities, that the dependence on the chestnut tree and its culture has declined.

Traditionally, chestnuts were harvested by hand, raking the nuts and burrs into piles in the mountainside orchards. The nuts and burrs were transported by mule and cart to the homestead.

Placed on the cool north side of a building, the nuts and burrs were covered with a layer of green chestnut leaves, where the nuts could be stored for several months. To dry the nuts for longer storage, the nuts were placed on a raised ventilated floor of special buildings, where a chestnut wood fire was kept lit below, and the warmth and smoke from the fire slowly dried out the nuts.

Once dry, the shells could be easily removed. To cook with these nuts, they simply had to be re-hydrated again by boiling in water. The dried nuts were also ground into flour with stone mills. The smoky sweet flavor is excellent, as the carbohydrate turns to sugar as the nuts dry.

Chestnuts were also an important food for livestock. The nuts were fed to hogs and cattle during the winter, and the animals were put out into the orchards after harvest to clean up the rest of the nuts. The sweet nuts impart a sweet flavor to the meat, and chestnut-fed pork is considered a delicacy in Spain and Italy.

Chestnut leaves were also nutritious fodder for animals, and dried leaves were used as bedding for livestock during winter. Chestnut forests also provide other delicacies. Honey made from chestnut blossoms is not very sweet, but has an intense, distinctive and astringent flavor. It is considered an aphrodisiac in Italy. Beekeepers depended on chestnut, as the trees flower late after many of the other tree species have finished. This makes the wood extremely rot resistant.

Chestnut trees, especially when grown in forest settings, grow straight and make excellent lumber which were cut into durable straight-grained planks or could be split easily for fencing and posts.

Robert Dunstan described how you could put a chestnut fence post in the ground for 50 years, pull it up, turn it over, and get 50 more years out of the other side! Because of this rot resistance, chestnut wood was used for ship-building, bridge timbers, railroad ties, exterior siding, barn and house posts and beams, flooring, doors, windows, exterior trim and any other area that was exposed to the weather.

Chestnut was also made split rail fences, fence posts, vineyard trellises, water well-casings, wine casks, barrels, baskets, furniture and caskets. Chestnut is truly a tree that carries people from cradle to grave. Chestnut trees were coppiced for various uses. When the tree is cut, the stumps send up multiple sprouts very readily this is seen today in America, where the roots survive the blight underground, and send up shoots again and again, to become re-infected with the blight.

The coppice shoots were harvested at various cycles depending on the use. Vineyard trellises and stakes were cut after only years, fence posts after years, whereas saw logs were cut on a year basis. Today there is still a strong demand for chestnut timber as an alternative to chemically treated pine for exterior uses.

In Linville NC, chestnut bark was used as shingles for siding many of the houses in this community. This was a traditional Appalachian building technique, and many buildings survive today, including the beautiful All Saints Episcopal Church, in which the entire building- beams, rafters and siding, was made of chestnut in the Unfortunately today, years later, there is no more chestnut wood left, so Tulip Poplar bark has become a substitute, but it does not have the rot-resistance of chestnut.

Tannin is extracted from the wood for use in the tanning industry for dyeing silk and leather and in the production of varnish and other products. Trees planted in colder regions such as USDA zone 5, may bear between years of age. The best location is a south slope, with good air and water drainage — avoid frost pockets.

A sheltered north-facing slope protected from drying winds and low sun of winter may be better for cold windy sites.. They are easy to grow and thrive in a variety of locations. Cold hardy to USDA plant zones Click for Learning Center: Dunstan Chestnuts. All of our trees are container grown in root-enhancing pots, ensuring healthy root systems and much better success upon planting. Store Locator Dunstan Chestnut. Learning Center History Dr.

History Dr. Dunstan Chestnut quantity. Product Details. In Spring we ship bare-root, dormant trees. All plants are dipped in a moisture-retention root gel before shipping and wrapped in plastic. They belong to the same family as oaks and beeches. The bark is grey-purple and smooth, and develops vertical fissures with age. The twigs are purple-brown and buds are plum, red-brown and oval in shape.

They can develop vast girths which can reach up to 2m in diameter. Look out for: widely spaced teeth around the edges of leaves. The seeds develop inside the prickly, green seed cases. Identified in winter by: the bark which has fissures that spiral upwards around the tree. About 16—28 cm long, 5—9 cm wide and oblong with a pointed tip and a serrated or toothed edge.

The leaves are quite glossy and there are about 20 pairs of prominent parallel veins. Long, yellow catkins of mostly male flowers, with female flowers at the base.

Sweet chestnut is monoecious, meaning both male and female flowers are found on the same tree. After pollination by insects, female flowers develop into shiny, red-brown fruits wrapped in a green, spiky case. The trees begin to bear fruit when they are around 25 years old. Horse chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum , which has similar nuts, but those of the sweet chestnut are smaller and found in clusters. It's an A-Z tree guide in your pocket. Sweet chestnut is native to southern Europe, western Asia and North Africa.

The story of how sweet chestnut trees came to be in Britain is unclear. It may be that sweet chestnut trees are a far more recent introduction. Today can be found commonly throughout the UK in woods and copses, especially in parts of southern England where it is still managed to form large areas of coppice.

The flowers provide an important source of nectar and pollen for bees and other insects, while red squirrels eat the nuts. A large number of micro-moths feed on the leaves and nuts.