
Aesculus hippocastanum. The genus, Aesculus, hails from the Latin for "acorn." The species, hippocastanum, derives from the Greek for "horse" and "chestnut," possibly on the basis that Horse Chestnuts were used to treat respiratory ailments in equines, and possibly because the tree has markings reminiscent of horseshoes. A dutiful latter-day apothecary, I instate the bible of herbal healing upon my lectern workplace counter and try to determine what ails the customer in aisle two. She has requested Horse chestnut. Horse chestnut: an anti-inflammatory, known to strengthen the capilliaries, thereby aiding circulation. Perhaps she has arthritis, or gout, those needling crippledoms of weak blood flow; or perhaps she is as I am, a seasonal leper, whose veins protest any oxygenation of the extremities until Persephone returns back upstairs. Horse chestnut: an expectorant. Perhaps it's a wet cough she suffers; perhaps her lungs are as two lakesome reservoirs that must be drained dry as the haunt of the Light Princess, lest the lady succumb to pneumonia and pass away before March. Horse Chestnut: as a flower essence, "helps those who repeat their mistakes over and over, without learning from them, to see themselves more clearly." Perhaps she's held fast by cyclic errors, stepping, in defiance of Heraclitus, back into the same river not merely twice, but five, ten, or fifty times. Ah, I sympathize dear Miss Aisle 2, for I have been in that thrall all my life, a one-woman pine processionary following my footprints in a circle because familiar missteps are less daunting than the assay of untrod ground. No more, though, no, no more. If I am such a Dorothy that home is my desire of desires, then I must follow yellow brick roads unnavigated, not my own bald tracks in the snow. If I am an Innocent Smith, I must row oceans, climb mountains, and hold truck with Emperor Ho and the hermit of the Sierras to traverse the "round road" home. If I am a hobbit, I must go to the Cracks of Doom to get back to my hole in the Shire.
So I shall prise myself from off my beaten track, with the Horse Chestnut in mind as a reminder of past folly and a symbol of future fortitude, for the nut of that tree is, after all, the conker, which Bilbo Baggins (as played by the inimitable Martin Freeman), when posed the question "axe or sword, what's your weapon of choice?" proposes as his munitional preference. And, as the old wives' tale has it that conkers keep away spiders, who's to say that Bilbo wouldn't be just as well served by his humble Horse Chestnut than any Gondolin smithery? Would it not be apt for Ungoliant's spawn to be undone by the seed of a tree? Would it not be apt for the most horrific of monsters to be laid low by the humblest of weapons? Though this is not the tale of bound pages or glossy screens, perhaps it might yet be my tale. Let me go out onto roads past my ken, protected by nothing more than Earth's bounty, protected by nothing less than the world.
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