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Chinese Chestnut Seedling

bare-root trees
Choose an item size to add to your cart.
$23.00
Item: 7546-A
stock details: 2½–5' bare-root trees
$103.50
Item: 7546-B
stock details: 2½–5' bare-root trees
Castanea mollissima

40-60' × same. Low-branching broadly rounded open form with large long narrow sharp-toothed shiny green leaves. Curious catkins look like green fireworks sprouting from the branch tips. Grooved grey bark. 

Although variable because they are seedlings, they usually produce excellent nuts 5–7 years after planting. Mature trees can yield 50 pounds of nuts annually. One of their best attributes is that they are easy to peel. 

Immune or at least highly resistant to the dreaded chestnut blight and used in breeding work to develop a blight-immune hybrid American chestnut. Distinguished from other chestnut species by the pubescence (fuzzy hairs) on the undersides of its leaves. 

Prefers loamy well-drained acidic soil and full sun. Two or more needed for pollination and will cross-pollinate with American chestnuts.

You might see some branch dieback after the longest hard winters in the colder zones, but otherwise pretty hardy. Flowers grow on the current season’s growth typically after the danger of frost has passed, which makes these great trees for the Northeast. Native to eastern Asia. Zone 4/5. 
ships in spring
Quick Details
Hardy to Zone
4
Compare
Compare with other Chestnut
Variety Product Type Hardy to Zone
American Chestnut Seedling bare-root trees 4
Hybrid Chestnut Seedling bare-root trees 4
Chinese Chestnut Seedling bare-root trees 4
Additional Information

Nuts

The nut seedlings we’re offering are grown from nuts harvested from the most productive specimens. Like all seedlings, each one is a little different, and nut quality may vary.

Chestnuts

Delicious sweet chestnuts are an important food for both humans and wildlife. Use them for roasting, stuffing and soups, or dry them to make flour for baked goods. The tree’s profuse fragrant white blossoms feed the pollinators. Lustrous dark green foliage is ribbed and sharp-toothed. Yellow fall color.

Before 1900 the American chestnut was one of the most important deciduous trees in the eastern U.S. Chestnut blight showed up in Brooklyn, NY, in 1904; within 50 years it killed virtually every chestnut tree in the eastern U.S. The blight does not kill the roots however, and rare stands of stump sprouts can still be found. Hybrid chestnuts and Chinese chestnuts are resistant to blight

Chestnuts prefer loamy well-drained acidic soil and full sun. Two or more needed for pollination and all three chestnuts we’re offering this year will cross-pollinate with each other.

Breeding for Blight Tolerance

Learn more about different perspectives on traditional breeding vs. genetically engineered chestnut trees as a strategy for blight tolerance.

Shipping

Items from our perennial plants warehouse ship from early March through mid-to-late May, weather depending, beginning with warmer USDA zones.