Castanea sativa

It is a tree up to 35 m tall with deeply fissured brown bark and lanceolate, spiny-toothed leaves 10 to 25 cm long.

Info Flora gives the flowering time of sweet chestnut in Switzerland as June.

North of the Alps sweet chestnut flowers late, only from the end of May to the beginning of June, according to the Bavarian forestry institute LWF.

Info Flora classes sweet chestnut as an archaeophyte, a species that arrived in Switzerland before 1500.

In Switzerland it is a forest tree especially in Ticino and elsewhere is often planted and naturalised, in woods of the hill to montane zone.

LWF states that the pollinators of sweet chestnut are insects, above all bees, but also beetles.

The male flowers supply both pollen and nectar, with the nectaries located at the base of the flower.

A French study with pollinator exclusion found a predominant role of insects in chestnut pollination.

Besides flower nectar, honey bees also collect honeydew on sweet chestnut.

Unifloral chestnut honey can be harvested regularly in German regions with dense stands, for example the Pfälzerwald and the Taunus.

Chestnut honey has a clearly bitter component, which makes it a particular speciality, and it crystallises only very slowly because of its high fructose share.

In Germany the sweet chestnut has been naturalised since Roman times, according to the Bavarian forestry institute LWF.