Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa) is a typical Perigordin tree. It grows everywhere where the soil is not limestone. Today's Chestnut woods are the descendants of former Sweet Chestnut forests planted for their fruits and wood. People, especially the poor, harvested chestnuts for flour. This very big trunk here below is what is left from a tree planted long ago, it is dying from old age now.
Don't worry, new trees begin to grow at the feet of this Methusalem.
Here, in June, a Sweet Chestnut wood in flower. Fluffy bunches of male catkins give the trees a festive look.
The male flowers in long catkins produce masses of pollen which the wind brings everywhere. There is a dusty smell in the air. The female flowers are very tiny and you don't notice them when you don't look from nearby.
Chestnut season is October. The burrs, with their nasty spikes that protect them against hungry intruders, open up when the fruits inside are ripe.
And now the feast can begin. Wild boar, badgers, mice, jays and other animals adore chestnuts and now they eat and eat and eat until they just can't anymore. They cannot eat everything, the tree has let loose all its fruits at once en there is too much food. So the tree can be sure at last some chestnuts remain un-eaten and can germinate.
Here, a mouse had its dinner, and a little slug takes care of the leftovers.