September 2011 part 4

27th After hearing about the problems Horse Chestnut Trees are having throughout the country I went to visit my old childhood haunts "conker island" and "the green" to see for myself. Sadly there is evidence of the problem here. Leaves have turned prematurely brown and the pattern on the leaves show the pattern of the lavae eating the leaves.

Lots of conkers lay on the ground so maybe the game of "conkers" is dying out as a children's game anyway as in my day and even my children's day they would have all been collected up.

Horse Chestnut tree (Nesculus hippocastarium) native to the Balkans it has naturalised in Europe. Can grow up to 30m. Fruit is green globular and spiny splitting when ripe to reveal brown shiny seeds (conkers). Sadly they are under threat by the leaf minor moth whose larvae  eats the leaves. There is one small hope as the blue and great tit like to eat the caterpillars.