OMG those spines! That’s like an offensive weapon. I wonder if they serve a purpose for the tree? I can’t see them getting stuck in animal fur and carried away unless it’s in something like yak hair or musk ox hair. Maybe the smaller ones adhere. Maybe it’s left over from when there were more woolly creatures around, like 10,000 years ago.
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You not have conkers?
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They had this show up on some survival programes. Meet the black palm.
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I had to Google for “conkers”. It occurred to me the only other time I’ve heard of them was in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and I didn’t know what they were (or have Google, or a dictionary, nearby).
They’re not common in most of the US, and the USDA considers them an invasive pest plant.
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I may have seen the bare brown core, but not with the spiny outer layer on. Maybe our local variant is different? Now I’ll be looking for it.
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So what trees do kids throw sticks into to knock their fruits off in the us?
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https://www.worldconkerchampionships.com/play.php
This is what the horse chestnut tree is for.
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Pretty cool. I’ve heard the term conkers but never knew what that was about.
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I don’t know, but I wonder if it’s actually a form of defense, to make sure that mammals don’t open the outer shell to eat the nut, which would be one less potential baby horse chestnut tree next season.
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They’re often called “buckeye” in the States rather than “horse chestnut”. There are lots of these trees in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc…consider the fact that Ohio is known as “the Buckeye state”. I grew up in Illinois, and at least where I was we called them horse chestnuts instead.
I believe “conkers” is what British kids call the nuts inside, which are played with.
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Ah… I never knew what a buckeye was. (I’m from Florida originally and moved to Missouri, still not sure I’ve seen these trees, at least not enough to notice.)
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They’re beautiful trees, actually. It’s just they’re a huge pain (literally) when the nuts fall.
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Eight days since the last post. This will not stand!
Today’s view out my window. Lovely day. Pity I’m ill.
Korean kids think that jumping in front of your shot is funny. Here’s one of the elementary schools I work at.
I’m normally the last person to suggest making life easier for car owners but Gunsan has kilometers of unused track and abandoned buildings alongside it. They all go through several traffic bottlenecks in the city. I’d rip them up and place a few one way streets in an effort to ease congestion.
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To be fair, I don’t think that’s unique to Korean kids. Or kids, actually.
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Some more work piccies…
Thursday at the sand mine, doing some planting on a topsoil translocation site:
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Gully forest at Epping on Tuesday:
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And on the slopes of Lane Cove on Wednesday. Horizontal knife for reference.
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Hopefully these don’t break the board’s formatting. I sized them for Instagram.
Seoul’s Hanyang University and the number two subway as it crosses over the Jungrang River.
The current hotness in Seoul seems to be the dive bar and Korean pub food restaurants district across from Konkuk University. I went a bit too early and most of the crowd were underage so I snapped some street views.
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Congrats! One year, 99 to go. 
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