Chestnuts!

 

So, we passed through the stand of Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa) trees I mentioned yesterday, and good news, the available crop of chestnuts was far superior to the trees I'd been seeing. Yeah, you still have a lot of empty nut sacks and and loads of small Hazelnut sized nuts, though with a root about you also have a good amount fair sized nuts and a reasonable amount of corkers (not conkers, don't eat conkers they'll fuck you up); what was striking was the huge number of fallen cases and nuts already eaten by wildlife; all around the trees the ground has been churned by horses feasting on chestnuts, they really seem to like them. Why might these trees have good fruits though so many others don't; all I could come up with was the age of the trees, these trees are old, they were old when I first collected here in the 1980's. Maybe that's it? What I can say is, we passed many Chestnut trees on our 12.8 mile walk today and none displayed the quantity or quality of nuts these trees did.  And yes, I did return with a bag full for roasting; well, it would be rude not to.