Sweet chestnut

The leaf

The leaf is long, up to twenty centimetres, narrow and pointed. The edge has large, sharp teeth, each at the end of a vein, which make it unmistakable.

The bark

On young trees the trunk is smooth and brownish-grey. With age it opens into deep furrows that often spiral up around the trunk.

The fruit

The chestnuts sit inside a green husk covered in fine, sharp spines. In autumn the husk turns brown, splits into four and drops one to three shiny chestnuts.

The flower

It flowers in early summer, once it is in leaf. The male flowers form long, cream-coloured spikes with a strong smell you can notice from a distance.

1. Jan
2. Feb
3. Mar
4. Apr
5. May
6. Jun
7. Jul
8. Aug
9. Sep
10. Oct
11. Nov
12. Dec

Habit

A large tree with a thick trunk and a broad crown. Old chestnuts can have enormous trunks, often hollow. In chestnut coppices grown for timber the trees are cut and grow back from the stool as several stems.

Where it grows

It only grows on lime-free soils. In Catalonia there are chestnut woods in the Montseny, the Montnegre, the Guilleries and other hills on siliceous rock. In the Penedès, with its limestone soils, you hardly ever see it.