Townie level: referred to an arboretum as a "tree jail"

forestofglory proposed talking about my favourite trees as part of my posting in November thing, and I was very confident that the answer was going to be oak... Until I googled it to check and discovered that I'd just glitched and stuck the wrong name onto the right tree. Oak: Good mouthfeel as a word, horrible tree!

It turns out that the trees I ACTUALLY like are horse chestnuts, which is a weird mouthfeel as a name but a good tree. ... Okay, no, let's be fair here: all horse chestnut trees are bastards, that's why they drop spiky balls every year like a Mario villain. But I am okay with that! As a townie, I expect all trees to have at least a little bastardry in them to keep them alive, and I really love conkers? They have such good texture once you get them out of the spiky ball! And there's an old wives tale that they repel spiders, which is honestly a good enough reason to love a tree on its own.

Q: Susan, how much of a bastard could a tree really be?
A: If it's not dropping things on people and warping the pavement around it, is it even a tree?