A Hybrid: Red Horse-Chestnut

I posted about white chestnut blossom before; this is about the red horse-chestnut (Aesculus × carnea).

It is an artificial hybrid between horse-chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) and red buckeye (Aesculus pavia).

Is that genetic manipulation as well?

Anyway: these trees look mostly like horse-chestnut, but they inherited the red flowers from the red buckeye:

^{Olympus Stylus 1s, 300mm, ISO100, f5.6, 1/640s}

A bit closer in:

^{Olympus Stylus 1s, 200mm, ISO400, f5.6, 1/160s}

^{Olympus Stylus 1s, 165mm, ISO400, f4, 1/640s}

Here's the white version of the horse-chestnut, for comparison:

^{Olympus Stylus 1s, 300mm, ISO100, f2.8, 1/500s}

Thanks for watching!