I usually learn the name of new plant or tree by "discovering it" in the wild, and searching for it's most prominent properties on Google Images. This time, however, I had the reverse happen. I was looking through Backyard Foraging and noticed how other-wordly chestnuts look. Here's a an example from this site:
Seriously, a nut wrapped in green or brown spines? You'd have to be blind not to notice this tree in your neighborhood. I mean, what could be easier to identify? I'd certainly never seen a chestnut tree, I knew that much.
And then I'm on a run last night, a route I've done hundreds of times (though not within the last year, probably) and across from a set of baseball fields in Pentagon City I see these guys hanging from trees:
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Holy Smokes, I do believe those are chestnuts in the making! Chestnuts are apparently ripe in the fall, so what I think I'm seeing there are a batch of unripe ones. And we're not talking one tree, we're talking like 3 or 4 of them. And again, this isn't in some hidden corner of Arlington, this is a 2 minute walk from Pentagon City Mall.
Once again, I give you the difference between seeing and paying attention.
To me, that does not look like a chestnut tree. Maybe do a little more checking...
ReplyDelete@anonymous -
ReplyDeleteYou may very well be correct. It's definitely keep an eye on it, and compare the different phases of the tree to known photos.
It's so easy to make a plant "fit" a match that it doesn't belong to.
My neighbor had a horse chestnut tree.When it bloomed it smelled so bad I could not go outside. Thankfully lightening killed it.
ReplyDelete