During the 2023-2024 bareroot season, we’re offering six varieties of chestnuts. Chestnut trees usually need a pollinator tree: another chestnut tree with fertile pollen that blooms in the same window. Some chestnut trees are partially, or even fully, self fertile (will produce nuts without a pollinator tree) and some chestnut trees are sterile (meaning they cannot produce their own nuts or be a pollinator tree). Since all this can be confusing, here is a pollination chart for the varieties of chestnuts we offer:
| Chestnut Variety* | Bloom Time | Pollinator? |
| Bouche de Betizac | Mid-season | Pollen sterile |
| Belle Epine | Mid/late-season | Good pollinator + partially self-fertile |
| Maraval | Early | Good pollinator + self-fertile |
| Marron di val di susa | Late-season | Pollen sterile |
| Tsukuba | Mid-season | unknown? |
| Colossal | Early | Pollen sterile |
Bouche de Betizac and Belle Epine,
Maraval and Colossal,
or Marron di val di susa with Belle Epine.
More information is needed for Tsukuba.
*Please note that all our chestnut trees are seedlings and will show some genetic variability from their parent tree. All our chestnut seedlings are grown from nuts/seeds that were originally pollinated by a pollinator tree, which will hopefully improve pollination characteristics of the seedling.
Mike,
Your Tsukuba chestnut is Korean/Japanese (Castanea crenata). Varietal. I planted another C. Crenata variety to hopefully pollinate, although I also did a Chinese chestnut and Colossal nearby in hope that they would also pollinate others in the same genus. Now to wait while they grow…..