Death of an old Friend.

On a favourite walk today through Grainsby Park in Lincolnshire we discovered that one of the oldest Horse Chestnut trees had been destroyed during the recent storms.
We took our children to this tree almost 50 years ago to gather Conkers.  I always looked out for the emerging sticky buds every Spring and followed their progress through to the lovely spikes of flowers and then into the Autumn when the fruit of the Horse Chestnut trees, known as Conkers, attracted generations of children to gather it's conkers.  The common name for these trees is Conker Trees.

We don't know how old "our"  Conker Tree was but have known it for 50 years or more and it was fully grown when we first came across it.
A lot of Horse Chestnut trees in Britain have become infected in recent years with a disease called "Bleeding Canker" which weakens the tree causing the leaves to shrivel and die prematurely, eventually the whole tree succumbs and dies.
"Our" tree had been showing the tell tale leaf damage for many years and I'm certain this disease had weakened it to the point that it couldn't withstand the recent gales.

Below are three pictures of it, taken today.

It wasn't just some of the large boughs that succumbed but the whole tree

from the top of it's trunk.

Olympus EM10 Mk2 with 12-100 Mzuik Pro lens.