Thursday, May 18, 2017

Horse Chestnut #ThursdayTreeLove

In upstate New York, we have a beautiful tree called the horse chestnut.  It is in bloom now, and I want to show one if it's flowers to you for #ThursdayTreeLove..
Large leaves.  And even larger flowers. Unlike some spring trees, they don't flower until their leaves are grown out.  Flowers can be either whitish or pink.  This is one of the white varieties.

And in the fall, the tree produces inedible nuts that children love to play games with.  One game, in particular, conkers, stretches back hundreds of years.  There's an entire tradition in Great Britain built around preparing and playing with your horse chestnut nut (conker).

What a lot of history rolled into one majestic tree.

If you want to learn even more about these majestic trees, click here.

Join Parul Thakur and other bloggers who love trees for #ThursdayTreeLove.
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10 comments:

  1. shalz75May 18, 2017 at 9:11 AM

    This is one unusual named tree for me- thanks for sharing Alana. Are the chestnuts roasted and eaten?

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    1. bookwormMay 18, 2017 at 5:58 PM

      Alas, the chestnuts on these trees are not edible. What a shame! A blight took all our native edible chestnuts years ago - they are trying to reestablish with hybrids, but it will be a while.

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  2. Tina BasuMay 18, 2017 at 10:10 AM

    I have never heard about Horse chestnut, though we enjoyed the chestnuts while travelling in UK

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  3. Liz A.May 18, 2017 at 11:59 AM

    Uh oh. I can just picture kids throwing inedible nuts at each other.

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    1. bookwormMay 18, 2017 at 5:59 PM

      Perhaps not the best choice for a school yard tree.

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  4. ParulMay 18, 2017 at 12:10 PM

    I have never heard of that tree but know that there are games around the fruit and that the leaves are so big, I am intrigued. Thank you for joining Alana. Really appreciate it :)

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    1. bookwormMay 18, 2017 at 5:59 PM

      I'm having a good time, Parul. Thank you for maintaining the meme.

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  5. EshaMay 31, 2017 at 12:52 PM

    Horse Chestnut is very commonly heard and spoken about in the UK, where I lived for close to ten years. There's so much history to the tree...conkers being an oft heard word... Glad you shared this pic...brought back so many lovely memories for me!

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  6. NatashaJune 1, 2017 at 6:14 AM

    Thanks for such an informative post Alana. I have heard of horse chestnut but presumed it was edible like other varieties of chestnut. Interesting to know the history behind the games kids play too.

    http://natashamusing.com/2017/06/thursdaytreelove11-morning-mysticism-of-a-mountain-tree/

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