Every day I walk around the park with Hap in a pram. She is very excited by all the leaves and flowers so I walk rapidly between trees and then very slowly while under them. Usually we watch in silence, but sometimes it occurs to me to say something about… whatever it is we are looking at. And I am starting to get a little bit tired of not knowing the names of the trees.
I thought that I would try to do something about this by searching on the web. The first website that looked promising was:
The problem here is that it gives (very long) alphabetical lists of flowers, trees and shrubs, brambles, or Grasses, Sedges, Rushes and Ferns, and you would have to wade through it trying to find a match with the photograph that you took.
The next website looked even better:
It has a neat questionaire that you fill in with your observations regarding, for example, the colour of the flowers and the arrangement of the leaves. It even has a helpful glossary. My problem is that when I submit my observations for this plant:
I get:
Which doesn’t seem to be right… I thought that this one was Prunus avium…
Oh dear. I suppose I will have to go back to saying: “What a nice tree. What beautiful flowers. Look at how the wind makes the leaves wiggle. Higgle piggle wiggle.” and then something about photosynthesis and chlorophyll. Bththth.
The first guy looks like a horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastinum). But it’s past one in the morning and I have insomnia, so I could be hallucinating.
I second Jenny. I grew up with those lovely trees in my yard. And recognize the flowers as well as the very special leaves.
Aesculus hippocastanum seems to translate into Horse-chestnut or Conker tree in English. I like Horse chestnut. Although, you can’t eat the ‘fruit’ that looks like chestnuts… they are way too bitter and not like the real chestnuts (of course I tried when I was a child. I’d read about chestnuts and didn’t know these ones are ‘fake’ chestnuts… pahh…) :)
Now you’re making me all nostalgic for the year I spent in Wales.
Although, truth be told, there are chestnut trees on the University of Toronto campus – the ones with green spiky seed cases. I can’t for the life of me remember if these are the equine ones, or not.
Bronwen – you’ve identified a common problem… I’ve pretty much given up on trees and flowers, except for the “easy” ones. Anything I need a key to identify… well, laziness sets in and it doesn’t get done. ;)
Bronwen, I feel your pain – I never really got the hang of botany, either. I just can’t get all excited about plants. They’re interesting enough, but there’s no.. well… connection or something.
Anyway, maybe you could take one of those small field guides with you (keep it in the pram), rather than trying to remember the plant features at home at the computer? (I will freely admit to having a number of very simple field guides for plants, insects, etc. – and they’ve turned out to be extremely handy with a five year old in the house).
My regards to nature-loving Hap :)
Horse chestnut is the ‘official’ name, conker tree is the one we all used as kids. For obvious reasons. It’s also about the only tree I can recognise.
Excellent! Thankyou! Horse chestnut. Aesculus hippocastinum.
I would like to think that I would have recognised it from the fruit… We are off to the park in a few minutes. I wonder if she will be impressed? :)
Anyway. I will try and work out what I did wrong on the questionaire tonight, and perhaps also look out for little field guides. That sounds like a good plan.
My fellow Ohioan, Audra, will probably know the other Aesculus that grows in Ohio, A. glabra — the Ohio Buckeye. It is our (why does “our” suddenly feel so wrong?) state tree, and also the name of an incredibly more-ish sweet that Ohio mothers make: chocolate spheres with a peanut butterish center crafted to look like the buckeye nut.
I have got slightly better at this since I counted up all the botanical references in The Lord of the Rings and discovered that Tolkien mentioned 18 of the 21 genera of tree native to Britain, leaving out hornbeam (Carpinus_, which is understandable, given that it’s quite rare) but also poplar (Populus_) and field maple (Acer), which makes less sense.
Bob: I had no idea that is what you children call the fruits. Thanks!! (we call them chestnuts…. hence the misconception and why I put some in the oven and then tried to eat them…. ;) )
We put them in the oven too: it hardens the conkers, which makes them better. Vinegar was rumoured to have a similar effect.
I’ve never bought into the idea of eating chestnuts. It grates against the British schoolboy psyche.
Bob> I shudder to to ask but… the oven to make them harder when you throw them at people? Or what else?
Ah, the uncultured…
The game of conkers is one that has been the staple of the British playground in autumn for generations. There are two players, each with a conker on a string – you drill through the conker, insert the string (or shoelace), and knot the string. (don’t worry, this is simpler than cricket) Then the players take turns to try and break the other conker. One holds the string so the conker is hanging down. The other then swings his conker to hit the other one. If neither breaks, they swap roles. This goes on until one conker breaks.
Bob: I had heard about the game of conkers somewhere, possibly some children’s fiction like “Famous Five”, but did not know how the string was attached.
General update: I bought a little field guide, and was able to make some tentative identifications. The size of the books in the Collins Gems series is very handy and this tree one will live in the pram until Hap grows out of it.
My bike ride to my old apartment took me through a tunnel of horse chestnut trees, the branches of the trees from opposite sides of the road meeting and merging in the middle. Great for most of the year, until the
spiky little bastardsconkers started to fall… I’d be concentrating on the road so I could swerve around them, and would get hit on the head by a falling conker at least once or twice each year.Are the spikes able to puncture bike tires? Not sure, I managed never to run over one!
Bob: THanks for increasing knowledge about games in childhood :) sound kind of hard to make them crack though… but maybe that is the point. (not over too fast)
Cath: I ran over them with my bike…. the tire was ok, I lost control though and fell since the conker inside is hard… ;) getting them in the head is always interesting …
That’s what helmets are for.
I am still reeling from Henry’s botanical examination of The Lord of The Rings. I am also wondering if he’s going to do The Silmarillion next.