CHESTNUT
Castanea dentata
COMMON NAMES: American chestnut, Spanish chestnut, sweet chestnut.
FEATURES: The stately chestnut tree grows in North America, western Asia, and southern Europe. The
species is usually self-sterile, requiring more than one tree for the production of chestnuts. The flowers
consist of long catkins that may contain the female, or fruit-bearing, organs at their base, or may be purely
male.
If the female flowers are fertilized they develop spiny burrs containing 1–5 one-seeded nuts. The
leaves are dark green above, light beneath; slightly broken, folded, or matted together; with a light odor
and an astringent taste. The chestnut is low in protein, high in carbohydrates and starch; contains minerals
such as phosphate of potash, magnesia, some sodium, and iron.
MEDICINAL PARTS: Leaves, inner bark.
SOLVENTS: Boiling water, alcohol (partial solvent).
BODILY INFLUENCE: Mild sedative, astringent, tonic.
USES: Culpeper said the inner skin that contains the nut “is of so binding a quality that a scruple of it being
taken by a man or ten grains by a child, soon stops any flux whatsoever.”
The green or dried leaves can be used, and it is considered a specific for whooping cough or nagging
distressing coughs, controlling the paroxysm; and in frequent hiccups and other irritable and excitable
conditions of the respiratory organs. Fevers, ague respond to the soothing of the mucous surfaces and the
nervous system; acts as an antispasmodic. Lobelia inflata (lobelia), and Caulophyllum thalictroides
(blue cohosh) are most successfully combined for the above mentioned.
DOSE: 1 ounce to 1 pint of boiling water, infused for 15 minutes. A wineglassful three times a day,
children half that amount. The fluid extract is convenient: dose 10 drops three times a day; 5 drops for
children.
HOMEOPATHIC CLINICAL: Tincture of leaves gathered in summer for diarrhea, whooping cough.
RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE: Konsky cashtan (horse chestnut) does not grow wild but has long been cultivated
in European Russia, middle Asia, and Caucasia. Folk medicine: It is valued and used for arthritis,
rheumatism, female bleeding, hemorrhoids, and chronic inflammation of the intestines. Clinically:
Extracts used for bleeding hemorrhoids, varicose veins, arteriosclerosis.
CAUTION: In recent years, Castanea dentata has been extensively damaged by an imported blight. Do not
use the now more commonly found horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum), which has a bitter and
mildly poisonous fruit.