Horse Chestnut

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 I have searched in vain but none of our own horse chestnut trees appears to have produced "conkers" this year. Our horse chestnuts are quite young - maybe 20 years old - and it was frosty at the wrong time this Spring - but the trees down the road have produced conkers - a mystery!

I had always imagined that the horse chestnut was a native British tree. Not so - it originates in the Balkans and was only introduced to Britain in the 16th Century as an ornamental tree in the parkland of wealthy estate owners. The tree is more democratically available now and is commonplace.

Horse chestnuts can grow to 30m tall and can live as long as 300 years. The leaves are "palmate" like a five fingered hand and could not be mistaken for anything else.


There are a couple of explanations for why they are called "horse" chestnuts. The one I like best is that when you pull the leaf stalls from the branch the scar that remains looks like a horse shoe down the the marks the nails would make.


As usual there are better explanations than mine. Try this one from the Woodland Trust

Diary
Overcast and a bit miserable (the weather that is). I noticed on my walk yesterday that somebody has marked some of the diseased Ash trees (Ash Die Back - dealt with in an earlier blog) for removal. I wonder why they cut them down now that the disease is so well established?

Another quiet night on the trail cameras with just one young roe deer and some rabbits.





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