The Horse Chestnut
Although it is well known in Ireland & has been widely planted in parks & garden across Ireland, the Horse Chestnut Tree (Aesculus hippocastanum) is not a native Irish Tree. In saying that, one could argue that after over 200 years of being found in Ireland, the Horse Chestnut Tree has long been naturalised to the Emerald Isle.
It was originally native to the mountains of northern Greece and Albania, however, it is now endangered within its own habitat, in the wild. Due to its beauty and its magnificence, especially in May & June (when it’s in flower), the Horse Chestnut has been used mainly as an ornamental tree, since it came to Ireland in the late 1600s.
Horse Chestnuts are large, deciduous trees, with a broad, domed crown, with thick branches. The leaves are hand-shaped with usually 5-7 toothed leaflets. Their big, sticky buds become very prominent in winter. However, in spring these buds flower into showy ‘candles’ of creamy white flowers with a yellow spot that turns pinkish-red as they age. These flowers soon become rich with nectar and thus become a hot spot and a source of nectar for bees. These flowers are soon followed in early autumn by big, spiky fruit which opens up to expose the notorious ‘conker’, which by the end of autumn, falls to the ground.
Conkers alone, have quite an interesting history, with the game of conkers, making the shiny brown fruit notorious to children in schoolyards up and down the country for generations. It is unclear how the game came to be called conkers – it may have come from a local dialect word for ‘hard nut’, or from the French ‘conque’ (conch shell) when the game was originally played with seashells, or ‘cogner’, meaning ‘to hit. However, it wasn’t until the 19th century, that the Horse Chestnut fruit; conkers, were being recorded as being used in the schoolyard game.
The goal of the game is to crack each other’s conkers, by smashing them off each other, while they hang from a string, which is attached to the conker through a bored hole. Initially, the conker is a ‘none-er’, and its first success (breaking the opponent's conker) makes it a ‘one-er’. If it wins again, it takes a score of one for itself as it won, and also takes its opponent's score to add to its own. For example, if a ‘six-er’ beats a ‘three-er’, it scores one for the win, and takes the three from the beaten opponent – so the victorious conker is now a ‘ten-er’. Although the game isn’t quite as popular as it once was, there are still to this day world Conker Championships which occur every year in the UK.
However, the Horse Chestnut now faces an existential crisis because the bacterial, Bleeding Canker Disease, has been dramatically increasing all over Europe since the early 2000s. It is caused by the bacteria Pseudomonas syringae pv aesculi, which is widespread in Europe and is increasingly common in Ireland, said the forest service of the Department of Agriculture. Bleeding canker, which withers the crowns of horse chestnuts, affects trees of all ages and often kills them. The forest service said the symptoms are mostly in the form of bleeding lesions on the bark. These produce rusty-red, yellow-brown, or an almost black sticky ooze.
The first official reports in Ireland were in 2010, based on trees infected in Phoenix Park. Shortly afterward, park authorities began felling these trees — 90% of the total. Despite this deadly parasite, Czech scientists offer hope that by inoculating trees with the pathogen, identifying resistant trees, and using their seeds, they may establish resistant populations.
Fortunately, we have some beautiful Horse Chestnut, currently growing at Cloudforest One in Lahinch, Co. Clare, amongst an abudunacne of beautiful native deciduous trees and some incredible coniferous trees.
