Chestnuts revisited

"Giles" wrote in message
...
On Apr 28, 4:44 pm, "Bill Grey" wrote:


One doesn't see many Chestnut trees over here in S. Wales. Edible
chestnuts
are usually bought in the supermarkets. Horse Chestnut trees are not
/that/common but the kids know where they are and raid them in September
for
the "conkers" - is that what you call them in the states?

Bill

The term used to be current here but one rarely encounters it
anymore. Not that the term itself has fallen out of favor and been
replaced by another.....it's just that most people under the age of
fifty or so don't have a very good idea (if any) of what either a
chestnut or a horse chestnut is. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
is merely a curious song lyric to most folks in the U.S. (assuming
they are even familiar with the old Nat King Cole song). Chestnuts
still show up on supermarket shelves, at least here in the upper Great
Lakes region, in late autumn every year, but in numbers that suggest
they are probably doomed to complete oblivion in the not too distant
future. I remember buying and roasting my first chestnuts thirty or
more years ago out of curiosity. I was most unimpressed. However,
these were either Chinese chestnuts or, more likely, the European
variety, both of which are much larger than (roughly three times as
large) and inferior in flavor to the American Chestnut.

Native horse chestnuts (genus Aesculus.....not to be confused with
some old Greek whose name is spelled somewhat differently but
pronounced about the same, as far as I can tell, or with true
chestnuts, genus Castanea) are well represented in North America with
6 species out of the 15-20 known worldwide. Here, they are also (and
about as frequently) called "buckeyes" which also happens to be the
nickname of some college's atheltic teams.

As children, my friends and siblings and I used to collect horse
chestnuts for.....um.....well, presumably for the same murky and
unremembered reasons that children (and adults, for that matter)
around the world have always collected things......mostly for throwing
at one another, I guess. Thrown hard enough, they could hurt. I
suppose that European or chinese chestnuts would do as well, although
at much greater expense. American chestnuts, being much less massive,
would have to be thrown very hard indeed. All this, though, refers to
the nuts sans the outer green husk (exocarp, I think.....not much
interested in looking it up right now). With this outer layer intact,
most of the familiar horse chestnut species could do some fairly
serious damage. However, this is another respect in which the
American chestnut (Castanea dentata) far outshines the rest. The
American chestnut "burr" averages roughly three inches in diameter and
is covered with a very dense coat of extremely sharp spines, a few
hundred to a thousand, I'd estimate. Even merely picking one up as
delicately as possible with bare hands is more likely than not to
result in a few painful pokes. Being hit anywhere with one that has
been thrown, or even gently tossed, is an experience one will never
forget. As a deterent against attack it is unexcelled in the natural
world, though large rocks might be their equal. Any living thing that
can't be stopped by a barrage of chestnut burrs is going to require
heavy firepower.

Interestingly, the chestnut burr is also an extremely formidable
defense against predation. Outside of insects small enough to get in
between the spines, I know of no seed eater (other than a leather clad
human) that can get at the nuts before they are ripe and the burrs
split open of their own accord, at which time they are (or were,
anyway) an extremely important mast crop. Before the trees' demise,
the chestnut was by far the most abundant and regular mast producer in
North America. Historically, within it's native range, the chestnut
was so prolific and so fecund and so regular that year in and year out
it not only outproduced ANY other nut producer, but ALL other nut
producers combined. I know of a place where four chestnuts, all
planted in 1955 and standing about forty feet tall with a crown spread
of similar dimensions, annually carpet the lawn under them with a six
inch thick layer of burrs.

Turkeys, squirrels, bears, racoons, rodents, deer, passengers
pigeons......um.......I digress.

giles


Thyanks for your very interesting reply.

As a matter of interest. kids do not throw conkers (horse chestnuts) at one
another, The game of "Conkers" is where two kids have a conker each. This
is pierced and a short length of string passed through the knotted to form a
sort of pendulum. Each kid takes turns to swing his Conker at the other
kid's conker which is held passively. The one whose conker gets smashed is
the loser. We used to harden our conkers by soaking them in vinegar - I
don't really know if this was really effective.

There you go.

Best wishes

Bill

On Apr 29, 4:39*pm, "Bill Grey" wrote:


Thyanks for your very interesting reply.

You're welcome.

As a matter of interest. kids do not throw conkers (horse chestnuts) at one
another, *The game of "Conkers" is where two kids have a conker each. This
is pierced and a short length of string passed through the knotted to form a
sort of pendulum. *Each kid takes turns to swing his Conker at the other
kid's conker which is held passively. *The one whose conker gets smashed is
the loser. *We used to harden our conkers by soaking them in vinegar - I
don't really know if this was really effective.

There you go.

Best wishes

Bill

That stirs an ancient dim memory. We never played that game ourselves
but I believe I recall encountering a description of it somewhere a
long time ago. I wonder whether children today still play it.

So, I just googled it and it seems they do. Interestingly, Wikipedia
suggests that the etymology of the name might be onomatopoetic,
"...representing the sound made by a horse chestnut as it hits another
hard object, such as a skull (another children's "game", also called
conkers, consists of simply throwing the seeds at one another over a
fence or wall)."

This at least seems likely to be the origin of the term to get conked,
meaning to take a blow to the head. Not as common as it once was, but
one still hears it from time to time.

giles