I never knew the difference before this. I'd only seen horse chestnut trees, before. I tried a roasted chestnut when I was 10-11(?). I thought it tasted horrible and couldn't even swallow it.
I never knew the difference before this. I'd only seen horse chestnut trees, before. I tried a roasted chestnut when I was 10-11(?). I thought it tasted horrible and couldn't even swallow it.
It's an interesting video. The TLDR is that some nursery in New Jersey in the late 1800's bought 12 Chinese Chestnut trees from Japan and shipped them across the Eastern US to wealthy buyers. These trees ended up spreading a blight that obliterated almost the entire wild chestnut population between Georgia and Ontario, estimated about 4-5 billion trees died within 30 years. Goes on to explain how chestnut wood was the primary building material in the US for centuries, which abruptly changed when the trees became essentially extinct in the wild.