cob

Further to my last post, talking of curiosities, I offer up this photo of these peculiarities. The nearby pavements have been littered with them in recent weeks. I'm assuming the succession of heatwaves we're currently living through, and the on-going draught we're enduring, has traumatised the trees and they all seem to be dropping their leaves, fruits, and nuts much earlier than usual.

These curious looking fellows, encased in their ferocious looking defensive spikes, are obviously nuts. I'm guessing they are some form of cob nut, also known as hazel nuts, sometimes known as filberts - they are all closely related, with only fine margins of difference; some geographical, some botanical, and some merely semantic.

I do believe that the word cob, in this context, is specifically British. But the word cob is also curiously unfixed in meaning. It can refer to the cylindrical woody part of an ear of corn. It's the name for a male swan. It's a round loaf of bread. It's a type of horse. And, in the UK at least, it can refer to a small, round piece of coal.

To me these weird little beauties look like they should be living under the sea, like anemones. Or that, perhaps, they've been dropped from a passing alien craft, with the intention of seeding the planet.

Photo is the author's own.