North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

Hans,
    It's hard to imagine soft chestnut burs.  Is this some chance mutation, 
or some other species?  If I have to get nuts out of the burs, I step on 
either side of the bur with my shoes to open it and pull the nuts out by the 
little string on the end.  Most people here with chestnuts in their backyard 
will rake up the burs in the fall and burn them.  My grandparents did this 
every year for their two spanish chestnuts, searching to get every bur.  And 
still, when we children would come to visit and run around barefooted, one 
of us would always step on an old bur.  The spikes break off under the skin, 
I can remember lying on the couch crying while my father dug the prickles 
out of my foot.
    I pity our dogs for the burs to come, our 4 chinese chestnuts cropped 
for the first time last year, and I've planted Japanese and American crosses 
this past year.  But we wonder if we react to the pollen.  I felt terrible 
every spring we lived in town with a chestnut tree in the neighbors' yard, 
but also a huge male mulberry in our own yard.  Someone said it was probably 
the mulberry, but I know that in Europe chestnut pollen is taken more 
seriously as an allergen.  If it proves to be the chestnut pollen, I don't 
know what we will do.  Take a vacation every spring while they bloom?  I 
think that when the forests here were 40% chestnut, life must have been hard 
for those who reacted to the pollen.     Donna