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Castanea sativa Mill.

The tree is 14 metres tall and has a circumference of about 8.90 metres.
It is a great deciduous, long-lived tree, in fact, it can be more than 500 years old. It belongs to the Fagaceae family and it hails from South-East Europe.
It is a quite thermophilic and heliophilous and it has the ability to resprout, if trimmed. The rooting apparatus is not deep and it prefers loose soils and rich in potassium and phosphorous with a slightly acidic reaction ones.
It is possible to find it in the mountain and insular area of the Italian Appennines and the piedmont area of the Alps.
It is largely cultivated in Emilia Romagna and it is a fundamental resource for the economy of the mountain areas.
It is cultivated to produce chestnuts and stem wood. A precious flour, which used to be an essential element in the nutrition of rustic people thanks to its high content in calories, is obtained by grinding the fruits.
Chestnut trees are melliferous plants and have a high reproduction ability, because of this it is possible to find many apiaries in chestnut tree woods during blooming time.
Chestnut tree’s honey is particularly rich in fructose and has a dark colour, a bitter aftertaste and it resists for a long time to crystallization.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)