The Thompson Street Horsechestnut

Twenty nine metres is tall for a horse chestnut. The species usually gives up somewhere around twenty five and spends the difference on width instead, so this one, at 4.4 metres round and twenty across the crown, is a horse chestnut behaving like a forest tree. It is also a tree with a job. Horse chestnut is the conker tree, and its entire modern distribution outside the Balkans is down to people wanting the fruit: the species is close to endangered in its native Pindus mountains and planted by the million everywhere else. The nuts are inedible, mildly poisonous, and were carried across Europe for centuries anyway because children want them. So the two weeks to come are the last of September, when the spiny cases split on the pavement. Before that, in early May, the whole crown goes up in white candles with yellow throats that turn red once each flower has been pollinated, which is a signal to bees and a nice thing to know while standing underneath. Portland registered it in 2004.