Horse chestnut ~ Конский каштан

The horse chestnuts are in full bloom here. The main street and many other areas are planted with them. Jaan and Raia say that the individual flower spikes look like Christmas trees, but we decided that the overall effect of the trees in bloom is like birthday cakes, with the flowers as candles.

We have had a great time observing the flowers, drawing them, and even conducting a little experiment with them. Actually, we've been watching them since the very beginning of spring. Their early buds are some of the most interesting around here: huge and sticky.  And in the fall we had a wonderful time collecting and playing with huge seeds from the same trees.  Here are some photos of what they look like now:

(See the beetle?)

Our notebook pages:
You can see them separately here.

And our experiment:
The flowers change colors!  We had noticed that some have yellow dots on the petals, and some have a bright pink-red.  We took a photo of a yellow one and tied a string around it to mark it.  The next day it was red!  (I know it doesn't show well in the photo; our particular flowers was folded down a little.  The colors shows on the others near it, though.)

And see the bright orange pollen on our fingers in the close-up photos?  That has sparked an interest in pollination and flower parts.  Jaan especially has been going around, inspecting the different kinds of pollen in various flowers and looking for their stamens and pistils.  On my part, I've been trying to learn the names of all those parts in Russian.  Sigh.  My brain moves slowly these days!