Plant · P-546

European Chestnut

Castanea sativa

European chestnut is the largest chestnut species and a former staple food across Europe, still grown commercially there for a nut rated as good as any in the genus, best cooked rather than raw and often ground into flour. It has long been managed on a ten-year coppice cycle for timber and basketry rods as much as for nuts, and it needs a warm, dry summer to ripen a crop properly - long humid heat is not the same thing and will not do. It is also one of the most blight-susceptible chestnuts along with the American species, so where the disease is present it does poorly on its own roots.