We interrupt the normal sequence of events for an important announcement: The chestnuts are falling but make sure you are not eating horse chestnuts! I made the mistake a couple years ago when biking back from a work lunch. I noticed the median of Ravenna Boulevard was covered with unguarded chestnuts. I loaded up my pockets, jumped back on the bike and cooked up some awful tasting nuts (saved me from a hospital trip). The Michigan State advice is cowardly but maybe the wiser route: "The first and most important consideration is to never pick up a chestnut or anything else off the ground and eat it. Toxic horse chestnuts are often found on the ground because even animals don't want to touch them." Safe chestnut examples are the three on the left, horse chestnuts are the two without the tassel and lacking a flat side.
This year I realized that Laurelhurst park has at least 10 beautiful, old, chestnut trees of the edible variety. Not sure if they are the European or Asian species but likely not the American version as those were almost pushed to extinction by a blight that arrived in the 1900's. Grabbed a few at the end of September and I'm still waiting for some of the spikes to work out of my fingertips. Now I know to smash out the nuts by rolling the pod underfoot. That day I also got a bruise on my back from a brutal squirrel attack - the little bugger threw a full pod from 60' up in the tree and spiked me. By far the easiest way to identify a horse chestnut pod is that its only got about 20 spikes and they will not stab into your skin when chucked by a squirrel.
I was taking the hound on lunch walks to the park with minimal success but one evening we set up for a picnic and the wind started throwing an almost continuous slow rain of chestnuts. That yielded 5.5 pounds which only took about 4 hours for two people to process... Haven't been tempted to return for another harvest.
