I’ve recently moved to Belgium from Canada. Among the many differences between my new home and the old is that there are trees all over with a particular kind of fruit on them. Always keen to lower my grocery bills and get to know my environment by acquiring food from the environment, I wondered if they were edible.
Actually, I was going to ask for an identification, but a little web searching has led me to believe they’re chestnuts. They look pretty much exactly like this: http://explora.koszalin.art.pl/c740/chestnuts.jpg
So… is it safe to eat them? Not chestnuts in general, but these chestnuts. They’ve started falling off the trees in the last few days, so now’s the time to find out. Concerns I have:
Are there safe and unsafe kinds (like mushrooms)?
Might the nuts from parklands in a Flemish city be contaminated by pesticides or air- or water-born pollutants?
Are there particular features that should lead me to reject individual nuts? (discoloration of the outer husk, etc)
Can I make use of the ones that have already fallen to the ground? (Some of the trees are far too tall for me to pick them.)
Actually, while I’m at it, I’ve heard that you can eat “rose-hips” - the bright red fruit left behind after the petals fall away from a wild rose. There are no shortage of these around here, on the sides of roads and in parks and highway embankments. How about those?
I’d really like to be able to make use of the nuts (and the rose-hips, too, if possible)… so any input is appreciated.
Rose hips, on the other hand, are edible - the seeds inside are packed together with a loat of irritating bristles though; there are two ways of dealing with this:
Make syrup or jelly - chop the rosehips, boil them and strain through a jelly bag, then boil the strained juice with sugar.
Make jam (really only practical for the larger varieties, such as Rosa Rugosa - cut the hips open, scrape/rinse out the seeds and bristles, chop and boil with a little water and some sugar.
Rose hip jam and syrup is really tasty and is well worth the effort (and it is an effort).
There are a number of other urban plants that produce berries that superficially resemble rose hips - some of these are edible, others aren’t - I’d strongly recommend getting a handbook and conclusively identifying the plant before you start eating it.
The kind of chestnuts you can eat look like this - the spines on the seed case are longer, thinner, sharper and more numerous- containing several (usually 2 or 3) non-spherical fruit inside. The inside of the seed case is soft and downy. The trees themselves are superficially similar - sweet chestnut leaves are narrower and not as robust as horse chestnut.
You might still find these in publich parks, as they are also widely planted as an ornamental. They typically don’t produce a worthwhile crop every year.
FYI, no need to go to Yurp to get horse chestnuts. They grow just fine here in da UP, and I’m guessing they’ll grow fine in Canada, too, given that the climate here is much like Ontario. I’m not vouching for the other provinces, though.
There was a horse chestnut tree outside my Grandparent’s house when I was growing up. I never played conkers with 'em, but did have fun throwing them at my cousins and such. Now this makes me want to plant one in my front yard!
I grew up in Sudbury (300 km east of Sault Ste Marie, in Ontario). I don’t think I’d ever seen such a tree before I came to Belgium. (But maybe Sudbury’s notrepresentative… trees don’t grow there the same as elsewhere…
Images of the interaction between dozens of fallen chestnuts and a lawnmower give me the shivers! :eek:
As an Ohio native, I feel obligated to point out that buckeyes (Aesculus glabra) and horse chestnuts (A. hippocastanum), while superficially similar, are not the same species. This page has a good overview.
I’ve been to Sudbury! I actually remember how odd the area was, with those big rock formations everywhere. We have a fair bit of rock here, but Sudbury looked… different. Had no clue about the geology of the place. Very interesting!
I’m not vouching for Sudbury, seeing as between meteors and lime, you guys seem to have a bit of a goofy vegetative thing going on. But I’m guessing that horse chestnuts would grow fine in the non-alien areas of Ontario. Let’s say 15 miles in any direction of Sudbury. For what it’s worth, I’m about 300 km west of Sault Ste. Marie.
I think I’m right in saying that some of the ornamental Aesculus planted municipally are actually hybrids and may include buckeye and horse chestnut in their parentage.
Don’t waste them! Do you have kids? You can make chestnut necklaces out of them. Just poke a hole through the skin, the kids can twist a screwdriver through the meat and other layer of skin, then string 'em on a shoelace.
We used to do that all the time growing up. Then, when the necklaces got boring, we’d toss them over the phone lines. We were short back then, so actually getting one up there was a big deal.
They grow magnificently well in Maine.
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For those of you in Southern California, I remember the happiness of my discovery of Macadamia nut trees in many of the parks, particularly Holiday Park in Carlsbad. The Parks & Rec gents gave me all I could haul, as they were a choking hazard for children, and as such a liability. Don’t know if they’re still there.
Pity they’re so difficult to husk and crack…
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Since we’re on the subject, hammerbach, how do you crack macadamia nuts? They have whole ones here for sale sometimes, but I’ve always been daunted.
Back on the topic, I haven’t seen any horse chestnuts here in San Diego, but once when we were hiking up in the bay area we came across one that had huge fruit–the size of golf balls, after they were husked. What variety could that have been?
That’s exactly what I did.
