Aesculus hippocastanum Horse-chestnut

Horse Chestnut is a tree that is familiar to most people and lots of children know it as the conker tree. It is a neophyte alien in the British Flora, introduced in 1616 and first recorded wild in 1870. It has been planted widely in parks and along roads where it can grow to be a large tree with a characteristic dome shape. The flowers of Horse Chestnut are very showy and the well-known fruits that contain the seed (i.e. the conker)  have an outer husk with sharp spines. Conkers are frequently scattered by people and seedlings derived from them grow quickly to form saplings. This is probably the main way in which Horse Chestnut has become naturalised in the wild. In its native range it is confined to the mountains of northern Greece and Albania.

Neophyte