We are in the period of the horse-chestnut tree - its white or pink upright flowers (candles they are called by many) now showing everywhere. Which calls to mind a woman writing from Australia to this newspaper and confessing to a bout of homesickness for her native Dublin. Above all she remembered the lines of lovely flowering chestnut trees along the main road through Phoenix Park. Could The Irish Times send her a colour photograph to keep her spirits up? The Irish Times did so, naturally. Apart from its use by boys when the nuts come out of their prickly shells in autumn and provide them with conkers for a show of masculinity in bashing the conkers held by others on the end of a string, there seems little practical purpose in the tree - save in its period of delighting the eyes with its flowers. Set out with space for display it is a lovely tree.
It came all the way from southeast Europe or even Asia, and not so long ago - likely in the 18th century. The reference to horses in the Latin name Aesculus hippocastanum, Charles Nelson mentions in his Trees of Ireland as relating to the Turks curing horses of coughs with the seeds of chestnuts; but, writes Nelson, chestnuts are very bitter and horses usually refuse to eat them; deer and sheep, however, he tells us, will. Odd facts he mentions are that the Botanical Society of the British Isles said that conkers was a game unknown in Hungary but played in Albania. But, of course, no one would be surprised if the game was dying out here, with all the computer and dot.com games taking up so much of young people's time. As to conkers, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the game was originally played with snail shells on strings. How long would your shell last? Some chestnut conkers have gone on to knock the stuffing out of half a hundred rivals. (Cooked slowly in lard until tough as granite.)
If anyone thinks of planting a horse-chestnut in the garden, remember that it will need a huge spread eventually. One, carelessly planted near some lovely American red oaks, has now got so gross that it will have to come down. Hemmed in by oaks on one side and evergreen on another, it was a major blunder to site it there. Not that the wood when cut down will be of much use. Doesn't burn well. That odd genius John Mackay in his book Trodden Gold writes: "Giants far-off in Asia, before devouring their wives, cull the flowers . . . to decorate their buttonholes. Giant's nosegays they are called." The most engagingly Mylesian book you could find on trees.
