Long glossy lance-shaped leaves with bold, bristle-tipped saw teeth on a clear stalk — never lobed
Sweet chestnut. The comparison beloved of quizzes: oak leaves are short, stalkless and deeply lobed.
Nature · Trees
Sweet chestnut
Deciduous · to 35 m · Roman introduction
Castanea sativa — Fagaceae
Probably brought to Britain by the Romans, the sweet chestnut is the tree of roasted chestnuts and of the coppice woods of Kent and Sussex that produce chestnut paling. Its long, glossy, saw-toothed leaves are the classic contrast with oak, and its old trunks carry spiralling bark ridges. Unlike the horse chestnut, its nuts are genuinely edible.
How to know it
How to spot them
- ▸Long, narrow, glossy leaves 16–28 cm with bold, evenly spaced saw teeth ending in a bristle tip, on a clear stalk
- ▸Bark grey-purple, deeply fissured and characteristically spiralling round the trunk with age
- ▸Long creamy-yellow catkins in July, strongly scented; the female flowers at their base
- ▸Fiercely spiny green husks, far denser than a conker case, splitting to reveal two or three flattened brown nuts with a pointed tip
How to know it
Deeply fissured bark whose ridges spiral round the trunk as the tree ages
Sweet chestnut.
Fiercely spiny green husks split to reveal two or three flattened, pointed brown nuts that are genuinely good to eat
Sweet chestnut — marrons. Conkers are poisonous.
Long creamy catkins in July, heavily scented, and a Roman introduction coppiced in Kent for paling and hop poles
Sweet chestnut.
The vast hollow tree at Tortworth in Gloucestershire, recorded since the twelfth century, is of this species
Sweet chestnut — the Tortworth Chestnut.
Cryphonectria parasitica, the blight that wiped out its American cousin, reached Britain in 2011
Sweet chestnut blight.
Quick-fire facts
- •Castanea sativa — sativa means 'cultivated' or 'sown'; the genus name gives us 'chestnut' via Castanea
- •In the Fagaceae with oak and beech, and quite unrelated to the horse chestnut
- •Probably introduced by the Romans; the Kent and Sussex coppices supply chestnut paling and hop poles
- •The nuts are the marrons of marrons glacés, and the traditional roasted chestnut; they are low in oil and high in starch
- •The Tortworth Chestnut in Gloucestershire is one of Britain's most famous ancient trees
- •Sweet chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica), which destroyed the American chestnut, was first found in Britain in 2011
- •Britain's summers are usually too cool for large nuts; most chestnuts sold here are imported from southern Europe
- •Corsica and parts of Italy once relied on chestnut flour as a staple, giving the tree the name 'bread tree'
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Woodland Trust — Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa)