In foreign countries the chestnut is a rich, nourishing food, comparable to the potato. Who could go into ecstasies over a vegetable that is a staple food for the peasants of Europe, Asia, and North Africa? Our chestnut is no staple. It is a delicacy. It is treasure trove from the autumn woods, and the gathering of the crop is a game in which boys and squirrels are rivals.
Ernest Thompson Seton, always a boy, knows the impatience with which the opening of the burs is watched for, as the belated frosts keep off, and the burs hang tantalizingly closed. The cruel wounds made by the spines and the raw taste of the immature nuts are poor recompense for the labor of nutting before Nature gives the sign that all's ready.
Here is Mr. Seton's estimate of the chestnut of "brown October's woods."
"Whenever you see something kept under lock and key, bars and bolts, guarded and double-guarded, you may be sure it is very precious, greatly coveted. The nut of this tree is hung high aloft, wrapped in a silk wrapper, which is enclosed in a case of sole leather, which again is packed in a mass of shock-absorbing, vermin-proof pulp, sealed up in a waterproof, ironwood case, and finally cased in a vegetable porcupine of spines, almost impregnable. There is no nut so protected; there is no nut in our woods to compare with it as food."
What a disaster then is the newly arisen bark disease that has already killed every chestnut tree throughout large areas in the Eastern states. Scientists have thus far struggled with it in vain and it is probable that all chestnuts east of the Rockies are doomed.
Chinquapins grow to be medium-sized trees in Texas and Arkansas, but east of the Mississippi they are smaller, and east of the Alleghanies, mere shrubby undergrowth, covering rocky banks or crouching along swamp borders. They are smaller throughout, but resemble the chestnut in leaf, flowers, and fruit. The bur contains a single nut.
The chestnut tree grows large and attains great age, its sturdy, rough gray trunk crowned with an oblong head of irregular branches, hidden in summer by the abundant foliage mass. (_See illustration, page 23._) The ugly cripple that lightning has maimed covers its wounds when May wakes the late-opening buds and the leaves attain full size.