Berlin's register files this tree as a Fleischrote Rosskastanie, a flesh-red horse chestnut, which is the German name for it and does the flowers no favours.
Red Horse Chestnut
Aesculus x carnea
The red horse chestnut is a cross bred deliberately, joining the white-flowered chestnut of every European avenue with a red-flowered American buckeye, first recorded in Germany around 1820. We map 3 of them, in 3 cities.
The result flowers pink in May instead of white, sets almost no spiny conkers, and largely escapes the leaf miner moth that browns out its white parent by late summer. It was planted for gardens, not found in the wild, which shows in where the old ones stand. Amersfoort's, from the 1880s, grows between the Onze Lieve Vrouwetoren and the old Varkensmarkt. In Leeuwarden one survived the redevelopment of a former hospital garden with crown anchors and a trunk wound to show for it. The one on the Wilhelminaplein has nothing written down about it at all, and in the Bronx family tradition says a Van Cortlandt planted the one on the lawn of their 1748 house.
Berlin
New York
This tree grows on the east lawn of the Van Cortlandt House, built in 1748 and the oldest building still standing in the Bronx, and local tradition holds that a member of the Van Cortlandt family p...
Amersfoort
This red-flowered chestnut stands between the Onze Lieve Vrouwetoren, Amersfoort's freestanding medieval tower, and the old Varkensmarkt square, which makes it one of the more photographed backdrop...
Explore by city: Berlin · New York · Amersfoort · Prague · Brussels · Seville · Munich · Porto · every city · or browse all species.