25 May 2025

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands. 

Longfellow’s poem has long been remembered but I never made the connection between his description of the chestnut-tree and reality. One day,   a member of the congregation at Stenton made an observation  at the kirk door about the beautiful chestnut  at the kirk gate which was spreading over the pavement. The penny dropped!

I had observed its conkers but not its spread! How little we observe in the natural world but the person who showed me the photograph he had taken of the  blossom on the  horse-chestnut tree drew my attention not only to its distinctive shape and beauty but to the way the sunlight had illuminated its glory.

Later on, I looked up the tree to view the blossom more closely. The type of flower is called a panicle. The branches of the panicle are longer at the bottom than at the top creating the effect of a cone.  It begins to open up at the end of April. In May, some trees had lost their blossom, at least one had not.

The most interesting thing about the flowers is their sex. The flowers at the top are male. The flowers at the bottom are female. This seemed unusual enough although replicated in other trees. However, the flowers in the middle of  the conical blossom are a combination of male and female.

Nowadays  people  want to be known as he, she or they.  The latter covers a number of different categories including a non-binary person. From this perspective, is the horse chestnut tree male or female, non-binary, transgender or … ? It seems to me that this is all quite natural, for this is the glory of  the horse chestnut tree!