Chestnut Trees Return
A familiar Christmas song begins with Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose and ends with Merry Christmas to you. It is thought that Native Americans were eating chestnuts (Castenea sativa) long before Europeans brought their trees to the new world. Michael Dolan, chestnut grower in WA said entire civilizations were built around chestnut forests in Europe. A fungal disease blight in 1904 destroyed four billion chestnut trees in the U.S. by 1940. If you buy chestnuts in a store now they probably came from Japan, China, Spain or Italy. The canned ones called marrons usually come from France. Dolan’s company, Burnt Ridge Nursery, sells Washington grown trees and nuts. A cousin of oak and beech trees, North American native chestnuts were grown for their wood as well as the starchy nuts. The rot resistant wood was used as logs for cabins, furniture, fence posts and rails, telegraph poles and shake roofs. Americans want chestnuts. In 2007, we imported 4,056 metr...