You learn something every day

[Wowbagger]

Today I found a fully-grown conker on a red-flowering horse chestnut tree. I always thought they were sterile. The shell, in keeping with red-flowering trees, was devoid of spikes. All the other "conkers" on and under that tree seemed to be empty shells.

The dog learned something too: much as you enjoy chasing sticks, it is not a good idea to stand underneath a tree waiting for an especially large one you have just seen thrown into said tree to fall out again. It is liable to hurt your paw when it lands thereupon.

[rogerzilla]

Paris is a great place for picking up big conkers (I'd recommend the Parc des Buttes-Chamont).  I don't think the French actually play conkers, so they're left on the ground unmolested.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Loads of chestnut trees in Poland too - they're actually the national tree of next door Ukraine and originated in the Bulgaria/Greece region - but no conker games either. Instead, Polish kids make little figures out of them with matchsticks for arms and legs.

Has the chestnut-destroying beetle - I can't remember its proper name, but it also comes from Greece and is spreading northwards - reached the UK? It breeds in piles of leaves on the ground over winter.

[hellymedic]

Loads of chestnut trees in Poland too - they're actually the national tree of next door Ukraine and originated in the Bulgaria/Greece region - but no conker games either. Instead, Polish kids make little figures out of them with matchsticks for arms and legs.

Has the chestnut-destroying beetle - I can't remember its proper name, but it also comes from Greece and is spreading northwards - reached the UK? It breeds in piles of leaves on the ground over winter.

I believe it has; there are a few sick/moribund-looking trees but most seem healthy hereabouts.

[Wowbagger]

A year or two ago a pair of horse chestnuts in our local park very suddenly died of something nasty and were removed. I've seen other trees with big cracks in their bark and patches falling off. I didn't think this was a beetle-related problem, more to do with a fungus, although I am aware that Dutch Elm Disease was a combination of the two - the beetle boring holes in the tree and the fungus using those holes to invade.

[Really Ancien]

Bleeding Canker.
Forest Research - Bleeding Canker of Horse Chestnut
A. x carnea, Red horse chestnut, Hybrids between A. hippocastanum and A. parva
these are fertile and breed true, so they have conkers.
A. indica Indian horse chestnut , this is a different species and has pink flowers with a cultivar 'Sidney Pearce' which has a darker red flower.

Damon.