Leaves of five to seven stalkless leaflets radiating from one point, and huge sticky red-brown buds in opposite pairs
Horse chestnut — Aesculus hippocastanum.
Nature · Trees
Horse chestnut
Deciduous · to 40 m · introduced c. 1600
Aesculus hippocastanum — Sapindaceae
The conker tree: a spreading avenue and village-green tree brought to Britain around 1600 from the mountains of Albania and northern Greece. Its palmate leaves, sticky buds and spiny fruits are unmistakable, and the horseshoe-shaped leaf scar with its seven nail marks is the classic winter clue. It is not related to the sweet chestnut at all.
How to know it
How to spot them
- ▸Palmate leaves with 5–7 stalkless leaflets radiating from one point, each broadest near the tip and toothed
- ▸Large sticky red-brown buds, in opposite pairs, glossy with resin
- ▸Horseshoe-shaped leaf scar on the twig, complete with seven or so 'nail' marks
- ▸Upright candles of white flowers with a yellow blotch that turns pink once pollinated
- ▸Green spiny cases splitting to release one or two glossy brown conkers; leaves blotched brown from midsummer by the leaf-miner moth
How to know it
A horseshoe-shaped leaf scar on the twig, complete with about seven small 'nail' marks
Horse chestnut. The classic winter twig clue, and the source of the 'horse' in the name.
Upright candles of white flowers whose yellow blotch turns pink once a bee has pollinated them
Horse chestnut. The colour change stops bees wasting visits.
Green spiny cases split to release one or two glossy brown seeds, played with on a string since Victorian times
Horse chestnut — conkers. The World Conker Championships are held in Northamptonshire.
Brought to Britain about 1600 from the mountains of Albania and northern Greece, and unrelated to the tree whose edible nuts it resembles
Horse chestnut. Sweet chestnut is Castanea sativa, in the beech family.
Cameraria ohridella, a moth first found in Britain in 2002, mines its leaves brown by midsummer
Horse chestnut leaf miner.
Chaim Weizmann's wartime process fermented its seeds for acetone to make cordite
Horse chestnut. Children were paid to collect conkers in the First World War.
Quick-fire facts
- •Aesculus hippocastanum — hippocastanum means 'horse chestnut', from Greek hippos, horse
- •Introduced to Britain about 1600 from the Pindus mountains of the Balkans; native range is small and it is assessed as globally threatened
- •In the Sapindaceae with the maples, and quite unrelated to the sweet chestnut (Fagaceae) or water chestnut
- •Conkers are poisonous to people, containing saponins (aesculin), but are eaten by deer
- •The horseshoe leaf scar with its 'nail' marks is one explanation of the name; another is that the seeds were fed to horses for coughs
- •The horse chestnut leaf miner, Cameraria ohridella, reached Britain in 2002 and now browns the leaves of most trees by August
- •Conkers were collected in the First World War so that Chaim Weizmann's fermentation process could make acetone for cordite
- •Anne Frank wrote about the horse chestnut visible from the Amsterdam annexe; the tree fell in 2010 and saplings were distributed worldwide
- •The World Conker Championships have been held in Northamptonshire since 1965
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Sources
- Woodland Trust — Horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum)