The chestnut tree has borne fruit for several years

In general, it takes about five years for a chestnut tree to bear fruit. Different from other fruit trees, chestnut trees have a long market cycle, and it takes a long time from planting seedlings to being able to bear fruit. At the beginning of fruiting, each tree does not bear much chestnut fruit. Large chestnut trees can pick hundreds of jin of Chinese chestnut, while small ones can only bear dozens of jin or less.

According to incomplete statistics, the annual output of Chinese chestnut was 250 million kg in 1996. It is distributed in 25 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) from Hainan Island in the south (18 °30'N) to Fengcheng (40 °31'N) in Liaoning and Ji'an (41 °20'N) in Jilin Province. The key producing areas are Yanshan, Yimeng, Qinling and Dabie Mountains and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, of which Shandong, Hubei, Henan and Hebei provinces account for about 60% of the national output. The low altitude distribution areas such as Changli in Hebei Province, Tancheng in Shandong Province and Xinyi in Jiangsu Province are below 50m. The high altitude area, such as Weixida 2800m in Yunnan Province, is generally distributed between 300m and 500m, which is called Mu Yanzi in ancient times. The physical remains of chestnuts have been found in the Neolithic site of Banpo in Xi'an, which has a history of feeding chestnut trees for more than 6000 years.