Horse chestnuts

Don't eat them. They're poisonous. Horses should abstain as well. But horse chestnuts do have their uses. The British government paid schoolchildren to collect them during World War I. Horse chestnuts even had a role to play in the creation of the state of Israel. See below.

Horse chestnuts, Aesculus hippocastanum, make a spectacular display of huge, white flowers at this time of year. The large horse chestnut pictured in flower above is on the front lawn at 1127 Watchung Avenue. Another handsome example is at 621 Berkeley Avenue, shown below.

The attractive leaves are palmately compound, their leaflets arranged like a seven-fingered hand.

Beautiful as these trees are, they have an Achilles' heel: drought and fungal leaf blotch reliably disfigure the foliage by midsummer. I daily pass by a row of horse chestnuts used as street trees at the corner of Hillside and Evergreen Avenues. In July I look for early signs of damage. By August I avert my eyes; the sight is painful. The photographs below were taken in September of 2007.

The hybrid red horse chestnut, Aesculus x carnea, is less troubled by leaf problems. Red horse chestnuts are uncommon in Plainfield. Two were planted in front of City Hall two or three years ago. There is a wonderful red horse chestnut that can be glimpsed from the street in the rear garden at 429 Stelle Avenue. This beautiful tree was recognized by the City of Plainfield as a specimen tree of special note at the Arbor Day observance in 2006. Its age is estimated at 120 years.

Uses of horse chestnuts:

Nutritional: Although horses shouldn't eat horse chestnuts, the nuts do provide nourishment to public enemies number 1 and number 2: deer and squirrels.

Medicinal: Horse chestnut extracts are used as herbal medicines.

Recreational: Horse chestnuts are the "conkers" used in the game of conkers played in the British Isles.

Military?: Indeed. Back to the creation of Israel: Chaim Weizmann, Zionist and first president of Israel, began his career as a chemist. Professor Weizmann of Manchester University refined a method of producing acetone by bacterial fermentation of starches in various foodstuffs just before World War I. Acetone was crucial to production of cordite, smokeless gunpowder. The Weizmann process was used to make acetone for the war effort. When war made corn and other starches scarce in Britain, Weizmann adapted his fermentation process to use horse chestnuts in place of corn. Schoolchildren were enlisted in the war effort to gather horse chestnuts to produce munitions. Minister of Munitions David Lloyd George, who had worked with Weizmann, became prime minister. Lloyd George's gratitude for Professor Weizmann's war contributions was such that it led to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which stated Britain's support for "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.(1)

(1) For more detail on the role horse chestnuts played in the creation of Israel, see

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A6958812

and

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1530046&displaytype=printable&lastnode_id=0

Copyright Gregory Palermo

Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia)

Black locusts get no respect. People have largely quit planting them. The trees plant themselves, soldiering on, spreading both by seed and by shoots from their roots. They’re often considered weeds. Capable of fixing nitrogen, black locusts don’t need fertile soil and can grow almost anywhere. (1) The reason we no longer plant them in any numbers is their terrible problem with borers, a very difficult to control insect pest that can cause them devastating damage.



The black locusts are in bloom now all over Plainfield. The beautiful, hanging creamy white panicles of these handsome American natives are quite eye-catching and resemble wisteria. They have the added bonus of fragrance. Aficionados of artisanal honeys might recognize the blooms as the source of acacia honey. The bark is also quite attractive. Deeply furrowed and distinctive, it makes the trees easy to spot even when they are bare of leaves.





Black locust wood used to be highly valued for fence posts. The very dense wood is resistant to rot in contact with the ground, a fact that led to the species' being spread around the country by humans from its native range in the vicinity of the southern Appalachian Mountains. The Jamestown colonists built hovels using black locust posts as their first habitations in 1607. The posts were noted by a visiting English naturalist to still be sound 100 years later. (2) The wood was also valued as fuel. A cord of black locust wood has the same energy content as a ton of anthracite coal. (3)

Drive or walk around and have a look. Most neighborhoods have some of these trees. An attractive example of black locust that is covered in blooms right now is in the front yard at 1400 Prospect Avenue.





Also in bloom now: tulip trees and horse chestnuts. Tulip tree blooms don't shout out their presence. You have to look for them because their pale yellow color blends in with the foliage. It's worth looking. The superb specimen at 443 Stelle Avenue merits a visit. Paulownias are also in bloom (if you can find one). There is a Paulownia (empress or princess tree, one of the symbols of the Japanese imperial throne) next to the garage at 1030 Sherman Avenue. Spectacular pale lavender blooms on a tree that, in this country at least, is not much valued.

(1) Nitrogen-fixing plants have a symbiotic relationship with certain soil bacteria that allows the plants to use atmospheric nitrogen. Unlike most plants, they don't require that their soil contain nitrogen compounds.
(2) Donald Culross Peattie, A Natural History of North American Trees, Houghton Mifflin 2007.
(3) Charles Fergus, Trees of Pennsylvania and the Northeast, Stackpole Books 2002.

Copyright Gregory Palermo