[Illustration: Horse Chestnut. A, flower; B, fruit.]
The flowers consist of a bell-shaped calyx with five lobes, supporting five separate petals, pure white in colour, but splashed and dotted with crimson and yellow towards the base of the upper ones, to indicate the way to the honey-glands. There are seven curved stamens, and in their midst a longer curved style proceeding from a roundish ovary with three cells. In each cell there are two seed-eggs, but as a rule only one egg in two of the cells develops into a "nut." The ovary develops into a large fleshy bur, with short stout spines, which splits into three valves when the dark-red glossy seeds are ripe. In the Sweet Chestnut the brown skin of the nut is the ovary, which had been overgrown by the prickly involucre; here the spiny green shell is the ovary, and the "nut" a seed. Though horses will not eat this bitter fruit, cattle, deer, and sheep are fond of it. Pounded in water, it becomes one of the numerous vegetable substitutes for soap. Under the name of Konker, or Conqueror, it affords a seasonal joy to the average boy, who first bombards the tree with sticks and stones to dislodge the fruit, and then threads the ruddy konkers on string and does battle with a chum similarly equipped, the one whose string is broken or pulled from his hand by the conflict of weapons being the vanquished. In some parts the game is led off by the recitation of the rhyme, "Oblionker! my fust konker."
[Illustration: _Pl. 144._ Horse Chestnut--summer.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 145._ Fruits of Horse Chestnut.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 146._ Bole of Horse Chestnut.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 147._ Horse Chestnut--winter.]
The growth of the tree is very rapid, and consequently the timber is soft and of no value where durability is required. Still, its even grain and susceptibility to a high polish make it useful for indoor wood, such as cabinet-making and flooring. It is also used for making charcoal for the gunpowder mills. Although Salvator Rosa and other landscape painters have made such good use of the Sweet Chestnut pictorially, they have utterly neglected the Horse Chestnut; and Hamerton hints that the cause of this neglect is the artist's inability to represent its large flowers and leaves by the landscape painter's ordinary method of laying on masses of colour: this requires drawing. The tree begins to produce fruit about its twentieth year, and continues to do so nearly every year. Its age is estimated as about two hundred years. The bark, at first smooth, breaks into irregular scales and in old trees a twist may be developed, as illustrated by our photo of the bole.