25 Sweet Chestnut Flowers

Sweet Chestnut Flowers (summer) 2017
Bronze h28 x w19 x d26 cm

The Sweet Chestnut is monoecious – a word I had to look up in the dictionary.  It means that the tree has separate male flowers and female flowers on the same plant.  To be more precise, along the long yellow catkins of the plant there are mostly male flowers, with the female flowers located at the base of these catkins.  Once fertilised, the prickly casing and fruit develops there, at the base.  The catkins then drop to the ground to form a carpet of spent flowers.  Isn’t nature clever and efficient?

You wouldn’t know it, when you see the sweet chestnut trees in spring looking like they’ve gone quite made with their catkin hairstyles, but they’re actually shouting out: Here I am!  Come and get my nectar.  These trees are an important source of food for animals, including humans.  They are a rich source of vitamin C and B, and contain the minerals magnesium, potassium and iron.

This head was the result of more playing, trying to see if I could cast the flowers in their catkin form, together with the spear-shaped leaves.  I wanted to portray the feeling of a sweet chestnut woodland, as found in Rookyard Belt at White House Farm, with its hinting of mysterious darkness (represented by holes in the bronze) in the foliage and between the trees.  Head: Sweet Chestnut Flowers is one of my smaller heads.  I’m pleased to report that it cast into bronze really well, showing all the veins on the leaves and the lines of catkins crisscrossing the surface to give the impression of a layered canopy.