Sweet chestnut leaves

Sweet chestnuts (Castanea sativa) are thought to have been introduced to Britain by the Romans. They made a porridge of the ground nuts and milk called polenta. However, the nuts must have been imported because only the hottest British summers allow them to grow large enough to eat. Most of the sweet chestnut trees we see today were planted for decorative reasons. But can that be true in Herefordshire where they are extremely common? Regardless of why they were planted they do offer a colourful autumn spectacle, the leaves showing green, brown/orange and yellow simultaneouly, much like the beech.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Fallen sweet chestnuts

The advancing year combined with stronger winds produced a fresh fall of sweet chestnuts in the local woods. On our walk over and round May Hill we came across many strewn across our path. The actual nuts were much smaller than those of 2018, a year when the trees produced many that were large enough for people to gather and eat. The dark, warm glow of the nuts and the orange of the leaves, combined with the sharp, green prickles of the shells prompted me to point my camera at these examples.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Sunlit woodland

As we walked through some woodland on the slopes of May Hill in Gloucestershire we came upon an area of coppiced sweet chestnuts. It's unusual enough to come upon coppicing these days - trees seem to be grown and cropped like cabbages in most places. But why sweet chestnuts, we wondered, as we stopped to get a shot of the sunlight penetrating the trees on the path ahead? I couldn't come up with an answer and I must have a trawl of the internet to see if I can discover the reason. Some of the coppicing is just visible at the left of the photograph.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Sweet chestnuts

The sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) was probably brought to Britain by the Romans, much earlier than the similar looking (but not closely related) horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) that was not grown in Western Europe until after 1600. Its seeds are edible by man and foraging animals and its wood was much used for fencing for which it was coppiced. In Herefordshire it is a commonly found woodland tree. This year's particularly hot and dry summer has more closely reflected the climate of Southern Europe where sweet chestnuts produce nuts of commercial size in great quantities annually, and consequently the British crop features plenty of larger nuts that are being collected for "roasting on an open fire".

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100