NATURE COLUMN

I SAW a Horse Chestnut tree looking rather forlornly by the edge of Ballington Wood the other day. It was not quite at the position of shedding its leaves, but it’s only a question of time before it will be denuded of foliage.

The Horse Chestnut is an integral part of the British countryside although it is not native. But why are they so called?

There are a number of theories on how the Horse Chestnut is named. One suggestion is that it got its name from the observation of the Flemish ambassador that Turkish cavalry men were feeding the nuts to their horses and another is that the name was acquired because the petiole bears a resemblance to a horse’s hoof.

They were once admired for their display of pink and white ‘candles’ of flowers which flower in late May to early June and their used to be a tradition in Victorian times of ‘Chestnut Sunday’- the Sunday before Ascension Day when people would flock to admire the blooms in London parks.

It is however the autumn when the tree attracts children out collecting conkers. The game is first mentioned in the 17th century shortly after the first trees were bought from southern Europe

The tradition of collecting the kernel of the tree for conkers is one I am very familiar with. There is a row of Horse Chestnut tree along London Road in Oakhill which local kids would plunder in the 1980s. Armed with pieces of wood they would hurl them into the upper branches of the tree to bring down the nuts.

I used to play although I was not an avid participant though some took to the game with the greatest of enthusiasm. Some parts of the country have adopted complex scoring schemes to determine successful specimens. In Wales a conker with 10 wins is a Colonel, 20 a General, 50 a King and 100 an Emperor.

In Stoke we were more prosaic and a more direct method of enumerating victories was used; conkers were “Oners, twoers, tenners and so on according to the numbers vanquished. There was more to the game than can be initially imagined. You need a good sense of distance and good hand to eye coordination as well as an ability to judge a winner. A big fat conker was generally a poor choice: a smaller one better. Conkers plucked from trees were also superior to windfall picked from the ground. Stories circulated on ways to harden the nut there were a few suggestions such as baking them in an over, soaking them in vinegar or burying them in salt.

However in terms of eagerness one has to have gone someway to best, Charlie Bray a 73 year old former gamekeeper from Northamptonshire whose suit, tie and hat were adorned with conkers and was world conker champion in the 90s held in the Shuckbourgh Arms near Oundle.