Year of the Fire Horse

YEAR OF THE FIRE HORSE

It is the Chinese Year of the Fire Horse. Whilst we cannot include Fire Horses in the list of Wenvoe’s wildlife, we do have a couple of species with ‘horse’ in the title. Arguably one of our best-known trees, still visited by adults and children from near and far, is the Horse Chestnut with its popular Conkers. Grange Park has some very fine specimens. Introduced from South- East Europe in the late 16th century, extracts of the fruit are still used for a wide range of medicinal treatments. In the First World War, children were paid to collect conkers from which Acetone could be extracted, and this was used in the manufacture of the explosive, Cordite. In the event, the process was not viable and the factory involved closed in 1918. A particular characteristic of the Chestnut Tree leaves in Grange Park is their tendency to turn brown as early as August, prompting some people to assume Autumn has come early. However, the colour change is caused by the larva of a very small moth which tunnels inside the leaves. Assuming every leaf on our trees has half a dozen caterpillars, mathematicians might like to try to calculate how many larvae there are in Grange Park!

The other species including horse is the Horse Leech, a harmless but large leech up to 15 centimetres or 6 inches long. They used to be seen in the watercourse that ran between the back gardens in Rectory Close and the Grange Estate. However, since the housing development, there is very little flow of water, and we can assume the Horse Leech has disappeared from that location