Chestnuts are now maturing.
Have you ever seen the burrs of chestnut? If you come from Europe, North America, Korea, and China, probably “yes”. If you come from Southern countries, probably “no”. In fact, chestnuts are widely distributed in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere.
Our chestnut (Castanea crenata) is an indigenous tree in Japan and also cultivated widely.
The bur is fully covered with hard spines. It may be difficult to imagine that delicious nuts are inside, if you don’t know it. Each bur normally has one to three nuts inside.
We Japanese gathered chestnuts as one of the important food stuff since the New Stone Age. There are some evidences that our ancestors even cultivated them.
Although the importance of chestnuts as food has fallen off these days, we Japanese still love chestnuts as dessert or confectionery which shall be introduced in the later blog.
Webmaster also found a wild flower of gold-banded lily (Yamayuri, Lilium auratum) near the chestnut tree. The bulbs of the lily were once exported to Europe as ornamental flowers, and also used for developing new horticultural varieties.
End.