Originally posted by jacamar Our friends across the street have a beautiful mature Horse Chestnut just inside their property boundary. Their new adjacent neighbour wants all the branches overhanging their property (almost half of the tree) lopped as they don't want chestnuts landing on their infant daughter's head and they think she will be poisoned if she tries to eat them. Luckily the City forestry department won't allow any further pruning.
I like the osiers and birches!
Horse Chestnut were planted in a lot of residential neighborhoods for the beauty of the flowers. My wife loves to see them, since there were a lot in the town where she grew up. Same genus as the Ohio Buckeye, a state tree with a state in its name! I've only heard of kids wanting to collect Buckeye seeds, which look like the Horse-chestnut seeds. I never saw a kid try to eat them. In my day parents knew ways to keep kids from eating stuff they shouldn't: (1) they fed them proper human food, and (2), if they saw their kid trying to put a Buckeye seed in its mouth they said: "DON'T DO THAT!" I know, such a crazy idea, but it worked.
Do they really think a seed is going to hurt their kid from falling on its head? If they are that scared the kid is probably already wearing a helmet, no? Sorry, I'm having too much fun with this, but it is so silly. I think I had a Buckeye in my shoebox of lucky stuff I kept in my room for at least half of my childhood. Here's another idea--the parents could crack open the internet and teach their kid about Horse-Chestnut trees. This website says that children in Britain and Ireland used the seeds in a game they played:
Horse Chestnut Tree Pictures, Facts on the Horse Chestnut Tree Species