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How the humble chestnut traced the rise and fall of the Roman Empire
The chestnut trees of Europe tell a hidden story charting the fortunes of ancient Rome and the legacy it left in the continent's forests.
"The Romans' imprint on Europe was making it into a connected, economical space," says Patrik Krebs, a geographer at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL). Krebs works at a branch of the WSL in Switzerland's Ticino canton on the southern slope of the Alps, an area that is home to giant chestnut trees, where many specimens have girths greater than seven metres (23ft). Although the Romans have previously been credited with bringing sweet chestnuts to the British isles – where they are still a key part of modern woodlands – research by scientists at the University of Gloucestershire in the UK found the trees were probably introduced to the island later.
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