Not Quite What It Seems

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Dear Readers, at first glance you might, like me, think that this tree, growing next to the Euston Road, was a Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). But think again! This is an Indian Horse Chestnut (Aesculus indica).  If you look at the flowers, you’ll see that they are rather more widely spaced on the central stem, and have a distinct pink glow, compared to the creamy colour of the ‘candles’ on an ‘ordinary’ Horse Chestnut.

Flowers of ‘ordinary’ horse chestnut

Plus, the  leaves on an Indian Horse Chestnut are very long and slender compared to those of a standard Horse Chestnut.

Indian Horse Chestnut

Another way to tell the Indian Horse Chestnut is that it’s flowering now – a standard Horse Chestnut’s flowers are well finished by now, even in a wet and chilly spring like the one that we’ve just had. And you might well see this tree on a street near you soon, as it has much greater resistance to the various leaf-miners and fungi that are playing havoc with the standard Horse Chestnut. A few other horse chestnuts also have good resistance (so far) to the insect and fungal attacks – first, the Red Horse Chestnut, which is a cross between the standard Horse Chestnut and the American Red Buckeye (Aesculus pavia). There’s a splendid one in East Finchley Cemetery. I used to call this the Spanish Chestnut, but apparently not. 

Flowers of the Red Horse Chestnut

And then, according to Paul Wood’s book ‘London Street Trees’, you might also see the Yellow Buckeye (Aesculus flava), which is a smaller tree with yellow flowers.

Flowers of the Yellow Buckeye (Aesculus flava) Photo A. Barra, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Judging by the bumblebees around the Indian Horse Chestnut this afternoon it’s likely that all of these trees are a good source of late spring/early summer nectar for pollinators. Plus, they are so attractive, to my eyes at least. I’m looking forward to the variety of street trees increasing over coming years, to meet the challenges of climate change. It will be interesting to see what we end up with here in East Finchley.

 

5 thoughts on “Not Quite What It Seems”

  2. lizzanorbury

    As the ‘ordinary’ horse chestnut is my favourite tree, I was very interested to read about these other varieties, which I didn’t know about. And it’s good to know that they have greater resistance to insect damage and fungi. Having said that, I’ve only seen one horse chestnut around here which has that crinkled brown leaf look, whereas last summer there seemed to be a lot more. It seems to be a good year for our local horse chestnuts in general – the flowers have been stunning and have only recently finished.

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  3. sllgatsby

    When I visited England last spring, my son and I walked in the East Finchley cemetery and we were struck by the Red Horse Chestnut. We have plain white chestnuts in Seattle, but this red one looked positively tropical! I took several pictures of it and ‘ll be looking into whether we can get one in my area.

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    1. Bug Woman Post author

      You were so close! I live literally ten minutes from the cemetery. And yes, I know the exact Red Horse Chestnut that you’re talking about…

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      1. sllgatsby

        I know! I was kind of hoping I’d somehow see you at the cemetery. Not that I know what you look like, but you know. We had been to Camden Town just previous. My son had looked it up and thought it looked interesting, but we were both disappointed. I was not at all what we were expecting. So I had the unplanned idea to head to the areas you talked about. We didn’t walk Cold Fall Wood, but we did stop at Queenswood, then on to East Finchley. I would have never gone there if not for you blog. So thank you!

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