The Sweet Chestnut of the Old Barracks

This sweet chestnut grows on what the register itself calls former barracks ground, on the Leusderweg side of what is now Juliana van Stolberg park. Castanea sativa produces the only true edible chestnut among Amersfoort's monumental trees, distinct from the inedible conkers of the horse chestnuts elsewhere on this page. Its leaves are long, narrow and sharply toothed along the edge, easy to tell apart from any other tree in a Dutch park at a glance, and in October the spiny husks split open on the ground to drop chestnuts a forager can actually use. The register bands its planting to 1900 to 1910, so it went into the ground while this was still working military land rather than the public green space it later became. A chestnut planted on a barracks ground for shade has quietly outlived the barracks by a century. Free, public park, open daily. October is the month, when the husks come down. Gather what falls rather than what is still on the tree, and expect competition from the local squirrels.