The Horse Chestnut of De Kring

This horse chestnut shares De Kring square with the Oriental plane the register also lists nearby, banded to a planting around 1840, roughly 190 years old and a decade older than its neighbour. Two trees of very different origins, one from the eastern Mediterranean and one from the mountains of the Balkans, ended up planted within a stone's throw of each other on an ordinary Dutch town square, which is itself a small piece of nineteenth century planting fashion: whatever looked handsome and grew reliably got planted, regardless of where it came from. At close to two centuries a horse chestnut has usually developed the full domed crown and heavy lower limbs the species is known for, wide enough that a tree this age can shade most of a small square by itself. Every May it produces the upright white candle-shaped flower spikes chestnuts are grown for everywhere, and by autumn the ground beneath is scattered with the spiny green cases and glossy conkers that generations of Dutch children have collected from trees exactly like this one. The register gives no history beyond species and decade. If you know more, tell us.