Conker championships blighted by tree sickness

Conker championships blighted by tree sickness

By Jon Swaine

The world conker championship could be in jeopardy due to a shortage caused by blighted horse chestnut trees.

Organisers of the competition, which is held every year in Ashton, Northants, are struggling to collect the 5,000 healthy conkers they need.

Many horse chestnuts are enduring a dual assault from leaf miner moths, whose larvae chew through leaves, and bleeding canker, an infection that starves them of nutrients.

Cankerous trees suffer splits to their bark allowing sap, which they depend on to distribute food and water, to ooze away.

Richard Howard, the chief umpire, said: "We're keeping a careful watch on how the conkers are developing, but they're very small for this time of year.

"It's a bit like having the football league with no footballs."

The Forestry Commission says that 49 per cent of Britain's horse chestnuts show symptoms of bleeding canker.

While both problems have hit British horse chestnuts in previous years, this is the first time in the championship's 44-year history that the competition has been put in doubt.

John Hadman, one of the championship's organisers, said he was now considering importing conkers from Europe.

"We are the world conker championship, so why not take the conkers from elsewhere in the world?" he said.

"We know they play a lot of conkers in France, in Germany and in Holland, and a number of these countries run their own championships. There is the possibility of getting conkers from those sources."

Dr Jean Webber, the Principal Pathologist at Forest Research, the scientific arm of the Forestry Commission, said that bleeding canker has been spreading quickly across Britain since 2001, having been confined to the south of England since the 1960s.

She said Forest Research believes its increased prevalence has been caused by a newly detected Indian-born bacterium, Pseudomonas syringae pv aesculi, replacing Phytophthora, a plant-destroying fungus, as its main cause. This may have been aided by mild winters and wet springs in recent years.

Dr Webber said: "There's nothing much you can do about it if your tree displays the symptoms. Our advice is: if you can do, leave the trees well alone, unless they become so damaged that they create a safety hazard.

"Disturbing the trees, by pruning them or making other attempts to clear the infection, may result in the bacteria being spread even further."

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