Crazy about chestnuts, here’s how to recognize them: “never eat them!”

Autumn, as we know, is the time of the much-loved and desired chestnuts. It is indeed one of the emblematic products of the first impetuous autumn colds after the sweltering summer heat and one of the most popular foods of the current season. Whether boiled, baked or directly cooked over the fire, chestnuts are the undisputed queens of this time of year, eaten at the end of a meal or as if they were a tasty snack, or why not, even for a satiating and super-calorie. aperitif. . People, adults and children, all try their hand in the woods in search of these delicious fruits but did you know that not all chestnuts are good?

Indeed, some of them can even cause intestinal problems and very serious poisoning. It is therefore essential to pay attention to the nuts (also called crazy chestnuts), or not to eat. As is true, in fact, for mushrooms (whose world is absolutely much larger), you must also be very careful to consume the right chestnuts because all those that you find, in fact, are not necessarily good. and edible. There is a particular variety of poisonous chestnut, absolutely inedible, although aesthetically it can be easily confused with the one that we often and willingly find ourselves preparing.

How to recognize the mad chestnut tree and distinguish it from the good ones? Let’s see this together. Despite the homonymy and the many aesthetic similarities, chestnuts and matte chestnuts are two different fruits (or perhaps it is more appropriate to say seeds), of distinction not too complicated if one lends a minimum of d attention and foresight. However, it can still happen that someone does not recognize them and it can be said, unfortunately, that cases of poisoning are not uncommon at all.

Wild chestnuts: The chestnut derives from Castanea sativa, a large tree that belongs to the Faceceae family and is between 300 and 1200 meters high, while the wild chestnut derives, instead, from Aesculus hyppocastenum, the chestnut tree from India, that is, the tree that is used only for ornamental purposes and to create large shaded areas along the streets or in urban parks, so it is easily traceable even in the city. Therefore, the original plants are already different, accompanied by the leaves of the two species which are physiologically different from each other. Those of the chestnut tree are simple and have a toothed leaf while those of the horse chestnut tree are compound and form a sort of palm tree.