Horse chestnut Trees Revisited
You may remember at the start of Spring I wrote a post about the Aesculus hippocastanum (Love that tree name!) or commonly called horse chestnut trees in UCD breaking in to bud. Well they have changed a lot since the last time I took some photos of them!
As you can see in the very bottom photo in this post, they now have a spectacular display of flowers and are just a mass of rough green leaves. Horse chestnut trees are one of my favourite trees at this time of year due to their very interesting flowers. As a child though I only knew of one kind, the standard white flowering version.
It was not until I went to college that I learned of or seen the red flowering variety. I am a much bigger fan of the red flowering one, Aesculus × carnea. I am torn though as I don’t have the room for such a bit tree in my own garden but really want one! The dilemmas of a plant lover!!
While the flowers are an extremely easy way to tell the two species apart, an other way is by their height. The common horse chestnut grows to around 36 meters tall while the red flowering variety grows shorter. The red flowering one only grows to around 25 meters tall and does not grow as wide either.
They are fantastic trees. Like the big daddy of the tree world 😉
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