fingered horse chestnut
leaves playing summer music-
flower candles stand
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Elaine Patricia Morris (c) 2018
29 days into May
May 29, 2018
From tiny beginnings to oceans I discovered the world in words
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Comments on: "29 days into May" (8)
Our Horse Chestnuts are already producing fruit.
People can eat the nut too, but it takes a lot of work to get the nut and there is a tiny bitter piece of the nut you need to remember to remove and not eat.
🙂
Oooh. I thought it was only the sweet chestnuts you could eat.
It is a bit of a process to get the meat out of a Horse Chestnut. And messy too as after you peel away the green skin there is a sticky black substance – And all for not much. But the squirrels enjoy them 🙂
We leave them here until they fall and shed there green coats leaving a beautiful brown polished nut. Conkers we call them. Great sport has been between boys with them on bits of string. Health and safety in schools has stopped conker fights now.
Horse Chestnuts here, are slightly different. I tried looking them up and only found your Conkers. Ours do not have the spikes on the outer shell. But once that green is gone the inside is a gooey black sticky mess that stains skin. The nut looks more like a walnut than a smooth chestnut. 🙂
The conker is the most beautiful polished hard surface. Furniture makers have tried to replicate the finish but never get anywhere close.
Not at all what the interior of ‘my’ chestnut. The lack of spines on the outside are sort of on the inside – the casing of the nut is ridged like fingerprints but much deeper and the black stuff on the outside is near impossible to rise off. I watched a video of a gent who has a great process for taking the nut meat out – let me see if I can find that…
I couldn’t find that but I did find out that what you’ve got is a sweet chestnut. The horse chestnut can actually be poisonous.
POISON TYPE
Aesculin, a bitter, poisonous glycoside that breaks down blood proteins. This property has led to the development of the common rat poison warfarin, extracted from clovers, which contain a similar toxin. Just touching the seed pod and nut isn’t a problem but eating it could be.
Oh we know they are poisonous. Even horses don’t eat them. Sweet chestnuts are the edible ones.