The morning after last week’s storms, our morning walk was littered with ‘conkers’, the large and shiny seeds of the Horse Chesnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). Ryan started picking some of the nicer ones up. “The people at work”, he said, “have been discussing whether or not conkers repel spiders. I’m going to try it.”
The idea that conkers repel spiders is a long-standing one, with strong proponents on either side of the debate. As a scientist I had a ton of questions about how it would work, none of which can be answered because there’s not a scrap of proof that it does work – only anecdotal evidence. (They can, however, repel clothes moths.)
Ryan spread his conkers out in the downstairs toilet, the smallest and most spider-infested room in the house. There are one or two sitting on every available flat surface:
This morning, as we were walking, Ryan told me that the spiders were definitely leaving the downstairs toilet.
I beg to differ:
There are at least four spiders in there. I suspect that – if indeed there has been a reduction in the spider population – they have just taken to eating each other.
One of the first memories I have of this house (and garden) is of a squirrel scarpering over the fence with a horse chestnut. I assume it had buried it in the garden at some point, and was retrieving it. We’re a bit too far from the local trees for their seeds to arrive by themselves. Last week the squirrels were beside themselves, rushing to collect the fallen seeds. I think they must have reached ‘peak chestnut’ for the moment, as they’ve calmed down.
Horse chestnut trees are a much-loved part of the British landscape, but they’re not a native species. They were introduced (from Turkey) in the 1600s, for their ornamental value.
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