Although all aspects of the tree are different the Sweet Chestnut Castanea sativa fruit is similar and traditionally eaten around Christmas time after roasting in the ashes or hearth of an open fire.

The tree is grand in stature but not as large as one would think... probably because most people can remember searching for fallen conkers as children when the tree would have appeared much bigger above them. The Horse Chestnut usually attains fifty to sixty feet in height and healthy specimens live for between 200 and 250 years. As there are so few trees apart from the Laburnum in the English landscape with notable blossom the Horse Chestnut becomes instantly recognizable when, in late spring, it’s hundreds to thousands of six inch tall flower spikes appear as creamy-white “candles”. The candle flower spike is known technically as a “thyrse” - from the triumphal sceptre, or “thyrsus” of Bacchus - and each one produces from, commonly, two or three to perhaps six fruits or conkers.

”Glorious array’d;
For in its honour prodigal nature weaves
A princely vestment, and profusely showers
O’er its green masses of broad palmy leaves
Ten thousand waxen pyramidal flowers;
And gay and gracefully its head it heaves
Into the air, and monarch-like it towers,
Dimming all other trees.”

The verse above concerns the Horse Chestnut and is from the “Forest Minstrel” written in 1810 by Scottish poet James Hogg (1770-1835) the second of four sons of a poor, tenant farmer, who had little education and worked as a general laborer and shepherd until his late thirties. His family had been steeped in the folklore and oral tradition of the Scottish Borders and he became a lifelong friend of Sir Walter Scott who was scouring the Scottish Borders for disappearing ballads.