Horse Chestnuts having to 'conker' a disease problem...(sorry!)

I liked your blog Fluff and your obvious affinity with the beautiful chestnut trees. It is sad, but when I read that it is not apparently a life threatening disease, it was a small comfort. Lets hope they can throw it off and become immune to this scourge. Your last sentence struck me as being so sad and pertinent to human beings. The last 10 years of my energetic, vivacious mother's life were blighted by Alzheimers disease which robbed her of her dignity and us of our mother. She died last year. But now, her great-great grandchildren are being born and I know that her life was really worthwhile. I bet there are some chestnut saplings somewhere which owe their existence to these beauties.
Its lovely and sunny this morning, so I must stop being so dreary. I know, I'll go and look in the garden.

For sure Mad...the garden always cheers us up & the September sun is wonderful.x

I'm having simular trouble with a large LilacTree/Bush the older part of it seems to be wilting while the newish growth is lush and greenI think i might cut it back to the new growth in the spring??

Take care! We had one in the back garden which developed 2 leaders. Was working under it when I heared a huge cracking sound - had to run for my life as a huge quarter tree crashed down, having split down the middle. Examine
it for problems.

Do you mean the Horse Chestnut or the Lilac?

When we visit our daughter in SW London, it's so sad to see the avenues of Horse Chestnut trees like yours. Some of them have developed a very nasty disease - if there's a seepage from fissures, then the tree gets felled. There are quite a number of gaps, now. :-((

We have one just inside our gate - I keep an eye on it!

Tree specialists also think if there are successive attacks from leaf miners they can cause a bleeding canker...a horrible-sounding condition...which causes a rusty red or black slime to ooze out of the bark & then it really is in trouble. Maybe that's what you've seen Spritz.
There are come cures coming onto the market (one called 'Conquer'!) so hopefully all is not lost.

I've noticed these trees near here going brown in August. I thought it was autumn coming early but here is a reason for it. I agree it does spoil their look.

What a shame, what will we do with out our conkers, I can remember playing conkers, when I was a child, until H/S stepped in, hope more tree are replaced if they get felled.

Most of the conkers were ok ...a few had gone discoloured along with the leaves ...it's one of those funny diseases which looks awful but doesn't seem to kill the tree.

Its a shame our weather is encouraging these moths.

Let's hope the tree develops an immunity.
lol

I read somewhere that there's a new strain of English Elm that they hope will be safe against 'Dutch Elm Desiese' Clever thing is nature.

I think they've already grown some Heron & are watching their progress.

That's very interesting. I'd noticed that the conker trees were in pretty bad condition. I remember seeing 1000s of flies around one particular tree a couple of years ago & the amount of flies, or perhaps moths, was what drew my attention. I haven't seen these flies around the trees since then. There are many 100s of Horse Chestnuts trees here in Huntingdon. On the big housing estate here called Oxmoor 100s of them were planted in the 1960s, they line many of the paths around the estate. The great majority of them are infected & I'm sure they ARE being weakened by this illness. If the leaves shrivel up & die in the summer then it stands to reason they are not completing their growing cycle properly. Another sign is the lack of numbers of the conkers themselves & the reduced size of those that do manage to mature.

You're right Balcony...they must be suffering because of it. It would be awful if this heralds their demise in this country just like the elms...

That's what I'm most afraid of, Fluff!

Here in Huntingdon there are many hundreds of these trees & our spring really is lit up by their "candles"! I know of some trees here that are well over a 100 years old! They are truly magnificent trees. It would take 3 or 4 people holding hands to encompass them!

I often passed a magnificent specimen on the bank of the river Great Ouse that runs through Riverside Park here. It was affected but it seemed to be less affected than most other trees in the town.

Strangely enough the deep pink flowered form hardly seems to be affected by this attack on Horsechestnuts. I think it's a different species of conker tree. The few example I know of here are very old trees & I think several of them have conservation orders on them. I do know that one at least has. It stands in the grounds of what used to be the Red Cross Centre till it was closed a few months ago. For two years I was the voluntary gardener who looked after the gardens there. I was told by a lady who occasionally did some gardening work there before I took over that the tree was protected & they could do anything to it. It had a few low branches that I would have cut back otherwise.

These trees don't produce the big "conkers" that the white flowered form does. It produces much smaller fruit & far less then the other trees.

I collected two "conkers" from the pink form a couple of days ago & have put them in a couple of pots on the balcony. We'll see if they germinate in the spring.

Thanks for that Balcony...good to hear from you.
I went to a local beauty spot today for some tree photography but got rained off...there was sweet chestnuts there & they had the same diseased leaves. But you are right...the pretty pink 'candle trees' along the road to our next big town didn't seem affected this year so maybe they are immune. It was on tv today...Countryfile I think... about the conker trees having problems.