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Chestnut

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Plants

                        iChestnut
   Sweet Chestnut
   Sweet Chestnut
                Scientific classification

   Kingdom:  Plantae
   Division: Magnoliophyta
   Class:    Magnoliopsida
   Order:    Fagales
   Family:   Fagaceae
   Genus:    Castanea

                                   Species

   Castanea alnifolia - Bush Chinkapin*
   Castanea crenata - Japanese Chestnut
   Castanea dentata - American Chestnut
   Castanea henryi - Henry's Chestnut
   Castanea mollissima - Chinese Chestnut
   Castanea ozarkensis - Ozark Chinkapin
   Castanea pumila - Allegheny Chinkapin
   Castanea sativa - Sweet Chestnut
   Castanea seguinii - Seguin's Chestnut
   * treated as a synonym of C. pumila by many authors

   Chestnut (Castanea), including the chinkapin, is a genus of eight or
   nine species of trees and shrubs in the beech family Fagaceae, native
   to warm temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also
   refers to the edible nuts produced by these trees. Most are large trees
   to 20-40 m tall, but some species (the chinkapins) are smaller, often
   shrubby. All are deciduous.

   The leaves are simple, ovate or lanceolate, 10-30 cm long and 4-10 cm
   broad, with sharply pointed, widely-spaced teeth, with shallow rounded
   sinuses between. The flowers are catkins, produced in mid summer; they
   have a heavy, unpleasant odour (Bean 1970). The fruit is a spiny cupule
   5-11 cm diameter, containing one to seven nuts. Chestnut trees thrive
   on acidic soils, such as soils derived from granite or schist, and do
   not grow well on alkaline soils such as limestone. When wanting to grow
   chestnut trees on such soils, the practice was to graft them onto oak
   rootstocks.

   Neither the horse chestnut (family Sapindaceae) nor the water chestnut
   (family Cyperaceae) is closely related to the chestnut, though both are
   so named for producing similar nuts. The name Castanea comes from an
   old Latin name for the sweet chestnut.

Diseases

   The American Chestnut, formerly one of the dominant trees of the
   eastern United States, has been almost wiped out by a fungal disease,
   chestnut blight, Cryphonectria parasitica. The American chinkapins are
   also very susceptible to chestnut blight. The European and west Asian
   Sweet Chestnut is susceptible, but less so than the American, and the
   east Asian species are resistant. These resistant species, particularly
   Japanese Chestnut and Chinese Chestnut but also Seguin's Chestnut and
   Henry's Chestnut, have been used in breeding programs in the US to
   create hybrids with the American Chestnut that are also disease
   resistant.

   Castanea species are used as food plants by the larvae of some
   Lepidoptera species; see list of Lepidoptera which feed on Castanea.

Uses

   Nuts

   A kestaneci or chestnut vendor in Istanbul
   Enlarge
   A kestaneci or chestnut vendor in Istanbul

   The nuts are an important food crop in southern Europe, southwestern
   and eastern Asia, and also in eastern North America before the chestnut
   blight. In southern Europe in the Middle Ages, whole forest-dwelling
   communities which had scarce access to wheat flour relied on chestnuts
   as their main source of carbohydrates.

   The nuts can be eaten candied, boiled or roasted; the former are often
   sold under the French name marrons glacés. One easy method for roasting
   is to cut a slit in the top of each nut and heat in a shallow
   container, tossing occasionally, at 200-220 °C for 10-15 minutes. The
   nuts must be slit as they tend to explode when roasted. They may also
   be pan-roasted or boiled.

   Another important use of chestnuts is to be ground into flour, which
   can then be used to prepare bread, cakes and pasta.

   Chestnut-based recipes and preparations are making a comeback in
   Italian cuisine, as part of the trend toward rediscovery of traditional
   dishes.

   To preserve chestnuts to eat through the winter, they must be made
   perfectly dry after they come out of their green husk; then put into a
   box or a barrel mixed with, and covered over by, fine and dry sand,
   three parts of sand to one part of chestnuts. Any maggots in any of the
   chestnuts will emerge and work up through the sand to get to the air
   without damaging other chestnuts. Chestnuts to be grown in the spring
   need to be kept in moist sand and chilled over the winter.

   Chestnuts should not be confused with Horse-chestnuts, which are used
   in the United Kingdom to play a game called conkers. Conkers, or
   Horse-chestnuts, are poisonous and are obtained from the tree of the
   same name.

   Other products

   The wood is similar to oak wood in being decorative and very durable.
   Due to disease, American Chestnut wood has almost disappeared from the
   market. It is difficult to obtain large size timber from the Sweet
   Chestnut, due to the high degree of splitting and warping when it
   dries. The wood of the Sweet Chestnut is most used in small items where
   durability is important, such as fencing and wooden outdoor cladding
   ('shingles') for buildings. In Italy, it is also used to make barrels
   used for aging balsamic vinegar.

   The bark was also a useful source of natural tannins, used for tanning
   leather before the introduction of synthetic tannins.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
