Chestnut: Other Species

Outside Europe there are chestnuts of several other Castanea species. The Chinese chestnut, C. mollissima, has been cultivated in China for at least as long as its European counterpart, and used in much the same way: dried, roasted, or made into meal. It has nuts of good flavour, whose relatively thin skin can be peeled off easily. The Japanese chestnut, C. crenata, has large, starchy nuts which are usually eaten boiled, when they have some resemblance to potato. The American chestnut, C. dentata, once a common tree, especially in the Appalachians, bore excellent nuts, richer in oil than European chestnuts. The tree was widely cultivated until the the 20th century, when chestnut blight almost wiped it out. (European chestnut trees, which were also cultivated, were affected by the blight, but less so. The Chinese chestnut, which is resistant to it, is now the main species cultivated in the USA.)