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UW'D-l
brids.
The 4,000-year—old “Hundred Horse Chestnut” of Sicily in a 1777
painting
by Jean-Pierre Houél. Courtesy
Chestnuts — A heritage saved
hat heritage tree can feed
generations of humans and
beasts while providing one of
the finest rot-resistant woods? Regu-
lar readers may have learned of the
oak’s traditional role, but a
more obvious candidate is
the chestnut.
It would be impossible
to enumerate the billions
sustained by the nuts,
comparable in nutrition
to brown rice. And before
the 20th century it was the
wood of choice for telegraph
poles, railroad ties, caskets,
houses and barns. The wood
is incorruptible, beautiful,
and strong enough to sup—
port crowns so large that in
France four of them can dominate an
acre.
The spreading canopy of the Cas-
tanea genus has been venerated for
thousands of years as it offers shade
and rains manna. In Sicily one chest-
nut estimated at 4,000 years old was
large enough in the 15th century
to shelter a princess and 100 of her
mounted knights.
This “hundred-horse chestnut” is
an example of trees we in the United
States could admire today, and we
might enjoy traditional chestnut foods
of the Americas like the Cherokees’
chestnut bread. But the blight that
arrived from Asia circa 1900 wiped
out over 4 billion trees in the eastern
U.S. alone. That’s 25% of the region’s
forest.
Blight-resistant Asian trees have
helped the restoration of chestnuts as
they are hybridized with European
and American varieties. Some breed-
ers have put in the time to produce
trees with 15/16 American genetics!
Though this work has been un-
derway in earnest for decades, it is
yet easier for us in regions sparsely-
blighted to raise chestnuts with some
confidence in their longevity. The
Olympic Peninsula has not been a
blight hotspot, still nurseries wisely
concentrate on blight-resistant hy-
I didn’t understand why anyone
would bother to grow chestnuts as a
staple food as opposed to delicacies
like France’s marron glacé until I
tasted some hybrids from Oregon. I
could understand how they make a
loaf similar to cornbread. The sturdy
flour has stayed fresh as long as two'
years.
They were delicious enough to eat
roasted and richly sweetened a stuff-
ing, nothing like Daniel Handler’s ob-
servation that “chestnuts in stuffing
By ALEX
FETHIERE
tastes like someone chewed up a tree
branch and then French-kissed it into
your mOuth.”
This might be true of the Chinese
and Korean varieties often sold in
Asian grocers. Asia has
many unique species, but
many commercial varieties
.are drier and less flavorful
than the species of Europe
and the United States. And
yet China harvests 10 times
more chestnuts than the
world’s second-biggest pro-
ducer, Korea.
We in the South Sound
are lucky to have one of the
nation’s best commercial
chestnut propagators within
V ' driving distance. Burnt
Ridge Nursery has been working with
chestnuts in our climate for over 20
years, and theirs are impressive to be-
hold. Picking up stock from the Olym-
pia Farmers Market is a great way to
avoid the astronomical shipping costs
attendant on trees.
Because chestnuts prefer well-
drained acidic soil, last fall I planted
some _in silty loam and some in a more
sandy area. Sterile pollen varieties
(like California’s reliable “Colossal”),
valued for heavier production, were
placed 35’ apart downwind from pol-
linating varieties like the French cul~
tivar Belle Epine. Those in the loam
have tolerated summer dryness bet-
ter, but may not have rooted as deeply
as those in the sand.
Burnt Ridge’s Michael Dolan told
me that chestnuts are excellent for
soil stabilization, but those I planted
in sandier soil have suffered heat
stress and leaf drop in our Mediter-
ranean summer. I’ll be eager to see
whether they leaf out in their second
spring, because I’ve mixed them in
plantings with oak to prevent erosion
and build soil. .
The happiest chestnuts so far flow-'
ered in silty loam. I briefly hoped for
chestnuts within a year of planting!
Keeping in mind the maxim about
trees: “the first year they sleep, the
second they creep, the third they
leap,” I thought I might set a record
with yields from these 6’ tall bareroot
tree-tweens. For all the flowering, the
two trees that bore yielded two nuts
apiece, each barely the size of a wal-
nut -— husk included.
I Alex Féthiére has lived on Hurst-
ine Island long’enough to forget New
York City, where he built community
gardens and double-dug his suburban
sod into a victory garden. He can be
reached at onlandist@gmail.com.
Thursday, Nov. 19, 2020 - Shelton-Mason County Journal — Page A-7
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