unexpected find
Yesterday I was doing my grocery shopping as I usually do Saturday mornings, and when I stopped in one store I found something I haven’t seen in at least a couple years: chestnuts. Like pumpkin pie, chestnuts typically only come around once a year. Sadly, they are getting harder and harder to find.
The chestnut, perhaps more than any other nut, is steeped in lore, at least in America. The Christmas Song, which is often titled or subtitled by its opening line, starts “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.” The song was not written until 1946, long after the disaster had happened. I refer to the disaster that effectively wiped out the American Chestnut.
Most people today are unaware of the vital part the chestnut tree played in the founding of our country. The tree’s natural range was in the northeast part of the country, from lower New England through the Ohio Valley and east to just shy of the coastal areas. It was plentiful in its habitats, and the tree was important for timber and food uses. Chestnut trees were so numerous, and farmland so hard to come by at first, that early settlers ground chestnuts into flour and used that in place of wheat flour for their baking. Today, the bulk of the chestnuts seen in the stores during the holidays are not American, but are shipped in from Italy.
Of course, you can roast them over a fire, or in an oven, and there are few foods that compare to the wonderful taste and texture of a roasted chestnut. My first exposure to them was 20 years ago, when I was stationed in Turkey. There, street vendors roast and sell them hot for a dollar or two for a half pound-ish bag. I had never seen a chestnut up to that point, but I tried them and have loved them greatly ever since. It was a friend of mine who finally told me what they were. I have thought about trying to grow one from time to time, but there is the whole issue of keeping it alive.
The disaster I spoke of started in 1904. Chinese chestnut trees were imported, and unknowingly, a fungal disease was brought with them. This fungal infection would be called Chestnut Blight. Despite active measures to control and prevent its spread, within a few years the American Chestnut was all but extinct, its timber, food, and beauty mostly a memory.
All is not lost though. Today there are ongoing research programs that are cross breeding the American chestnut with the Chinese chestnut that are Chestnut Blight resistant. The hope is that one day we will have a fully resistant American strain that will return to its native habitat and rightful place in the forest.
I have such a respect and love for this tree, I almost chose it for my pseudonym - Castanea, though it was too close in pronunciation to Castanada, and since I’m not a follower of his, I chose Phagos instead, an old English spelling of Fagus, the genus of the Beech tree.