Why we still love that old chestnut!

Schoolboys may no longer be quite so bonkers about conker trees... but in autumn, they are still a delight

THE two of us looked out at the blue sky,’ wrote a girl in Amsterdam, in February 1944, ‘the bare chestnut tree glittering with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air, and we were so moved and entranced that we couldn’t speak.’

Even at this time of year, too, a horse chestnut is a gorgeous thing, as its leaves fade through russet to orange to gold and the conkers start steadily to fall (or, as the mood takes them, burst from their spiky spheres).

Forty years ago, conkers was still widely played by Scottish schoolboys. At my academy we even traded them, talked eagerly of where the biggest might be found and how best to harden them up. The custom seems to have ceased, for beautiful conkers now litter pavements all over our cities, unwanted and unsought.

It is a funny tree. For one, there is very little folklore in these islands about aesculus hippocastanum, because it is a relatively recent arrival – only introduced in Elizabethan times. It has since been planted all over the world, even as far north as Iceland, but it is seen at its best in such temperate climes as our own and those of New Zealand and Ireland.

It is not native to anywhere save the Balkan peninsula nor, in practical terms, is it a particularly useful tree. The timber is too soft for building. The conkers are mildly poisonous, and although squirrels do dutifully collect and bury the nuts, they will only recover and devour them when truly desperate.

But it is a fabulous tree to look at, especially in May, when those great creamy flowers, darkening to pink, appear as so many candelabra amid those great leaves like the fingers of an extended palm. So splendid is this blossom that it is the official symbol of Kiev, capital of Ukraine.

IN summer the horse chestnut, which grows quickly and spreads impressively, is a delightful thing to sit under and, even in winter, its great sticky buds leave lingering notes of colour. (That waxy exudant is cherished by bees, which use it to make propolis, a sort of handy Polyfilla for carrying out running repairs to the hive.)

Accordingly, the horse chestnut has been widely planted over the centuries as an ornamental tree, especially as it has a long life, readily attaining 300 years or more. And one can become very attached to a given specimen. There was a beauty in Southbrae Drive, Jordanhill, Glasgow, and when it had some years ago to be felled something of my childhood died with it.

And it does have some symbolism – for long life, for integrity, for honour, for familiarity. Few trees are as instantly recognisable, regardless of season, as the horse chestnut. We still affectionately dismiss some venerable tale or other as ‘that old chestnut’ and, in Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell’s terrifying study of a totalitarian future – in the coldest irony Winston takes himself to the Chestnut Tree Café, after his release by the Ministry of Love. A place of betrayal in a society confected in lies. And there is endearing 1939 footage of King George VI and his Queen enjoying a singalong of ’Neath the Spreading Chestnut Tree at a merry boys camp, the pair joining heartily in – and with the actions too, even in the oncoming storm of another terrible war.

Propolis apart, the horse chestnut is a prized source of pollen and nectar for our busy honeybees.

Deer will happily eat conkers and without ill effect. Caterpillars of the triangle moth relish its leaves – and so, unfortunately, do those of the horse chestnut leafminer moth.

It has been ruefully calculated that over half of all horse chestnut trees in Britain have now been hit by the moth, first reported here in 2002, and they are also vulnerable to bleeding canker and some fungal afflictions.

Some myths should be knocked firmly on the head. Conkers strewn about your home will not deter spiders in the slightest (though they are a vaguely effective mothrepellent in your wardrobe).

The Victorians did have involved recipes for drying and milling conkers down to a coarse flour – though it had to be leached to remove toxins – and the government, during the Great War, did launch a national appeal for conkers as a source of acetone, essential for the production of the bullet propellent cordite.

AND the Vikings, who took serious pride in keeping themselves clean and did serious trade with the Balkans, developed a very effective soap from conkers. Even today, you can fashion a shampoo from the nuts.

It was by deliberately planting horse chestnuts over their lagering cellars in pre-refrigeration days, with the leaf-laden branches keeping the summer heat from the ground, that the Germans accidentally invented the beer garden. There are serious medical applications too. Clinical trials have been done on horse chestnut seed extract aescin, which is antiinflammatory and freeradical scavenging.

And, in folk medicine, a poultice made with ground conkers (applied externally, of course) does give some relief from sprains and bruises.

You would not build a house with horse chestnut timber, but you will certainly have seen cleft-chestnut paling, a simple but sturdy fence, typically at the margins of rural railway stations and – the pales are wired closely together – which can be erected very quickly and will last many years.

And those who carve or turn wood prize the timber for its softness.

It makes particularly fine fruit bowls, not least as horse chestnut naturally absorbs damp. It has also been used to make racquet grips, broom handles, boxes and toys.

‘Our chestnut tree is in full bloom,’ diarised that young lass again in May 1944. ‘It’s covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.’

She was, of course, Anne Frank, hidden with her family in that Amsterdam ‘secret annexe’ for more than two years, and in all that time, the tree and its attendant birds were the only living nature she could see.

Anne would perish in the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp weeks from the end of the war and, in 2005, that same tree began to die.

It finally fell on August 23, 2010 – snapped by a storm, just a few feet off the ground. But by then, for 15 years its conkers had been annually gathered. Today, largely at institutions named after her, ‘Anne Frank chestnut trees’ grow all over the world.

The last 13 Anne Frank trees were planted in the US three years later, and 150 were entrusted to an Amsterdam woodland park.

They will stand for centuries to come, emblematic of decency and hope.