Horse chestnuts and their husks cover part of the Liberty Street sidewalk outside the perimeter fence of the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Albany Saturday.
It’s that time of year when it rains horse chestnuts — if, that is, you stand under a towering tree of the species Aesculus hippocastanum and there’s a gust of wind.
There are a bunch of those stately trees on the grounds of what used to be the Bureau of Mines in Albany. It hasn’t been called that since 1996, but old habits are hard to break. The place has been the National Energy Technology Laboratory since 2005.
The part of the lab’s campus across Liberty Street from West Albany High School used to serve as kind of a park accessible to the public, including students at West. Then came 9-11 and security fences went up all over America, including here.
You can find chestnuts on the ground on three sides of the NETL campus, outside the fence, on Liberty and Broadway streets and on Queen Avenue too.
I went there Saturday on the bike. I’ve always liked these seeds, the way they look and feel when first they pop out of their green husks.
Too bad they are inedible. Various references, including one from Oregon State University’s Department of Horticulture, mention that the seeds are poisonous. Not even Albany’s squirrels will touch them.
The OSU publication says “the fruit’s bitter taste prevents the consumption of large amounts.”
As commenters on previous horse chestnut stories noted, in the United Kingdom they call the nuts conkers. They have a children’s game where you thread a chestnut on a string, then swing it and try to conk and break one held by your opponent.
Conkers, the game, has not caught on around here. If it ever does — unlikely as long as the motto with children’s games is “safety first” — players will find plenty of ammo on Liberty Street in Octobers to come. (hh)
No longer fresh, these conkers have been on the ground a few days.
Time to check on chestnuts again
Horse chestnuts and their husks cover part of the Liberty Street sidewalk outside the perimeter fence of the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Albany Saturday.
It’s that time of year when it rains horse chestnuts — if, that is, you stand under a towering tree of the species Aesculus hippocastanum and there’s a gust of wind.
There are a bunch of those stately trees on the grounds of what used to be the Bureau of Mines in Albany. It hasn’t been called that since 1996, but old habits are hard to break. The place has been the National Energy Technology Laboratory since 2005.
The part of the lab’s campus across Liberty Street from West Albany High School used to serve as kind of a park accessible to the public, including students at West. Then came 9-11 and security fences went up all over America, including here.
You can find chestnuts on the ground on three sides of the NETL campus, outside the fence, on Liberty and Broadway streets and on Queen Avenue too.
I went there Saturday on the bike. I’ve always liked these seeds, the way they look and feel when first they pop out of their green husks.
Too bad they are inedible. Various references, including one from Oregon State University’s Department of Horticulture, mention that the seeds are poisonous. Not even Albany’s squirrels will touch them.
The OSU publication says “the fruit’s bitter taste prevents the consumption of large amounts.”
As commenters on previous horse chestnut stories noted, in the United Kingdom they call the nuts conkers. They have a children’s game where you thread a chestnut on a string, then swing it and try to conk and break one held by your opponent.
Conkers, the game, has not caught on around here. If it ever does — unlikely as long as the motto with children’s games is “safety first” — players will find plenty of ammo on Liberty Street in Octobers to come. (hh)
No longer fresh, these conkers have been on the ground a few days.
Tags: Aesculus hippocastanum, chestnut trees, conkers, horse chestnuts, Liberty Street, NETL campus