Beneath a Chestnut Tree

The tree is just outside the building where I'm auditing a physics class at the University of Massachusetts.

Edit (from a friend's email): It's "probably a Horse Chestnut tree as most American chestnut trees have died off from chestnut blight. ... Horse Chestnuts are not edible, so be careful of the identification before you roast them. We used to play a game called "Conkers" with them as children growing up in the Bronx. Here is an interesting link about that." [It would seem to have originated in the U.K.]

I'll confess that I first saw just one chestnut on the ground, and collected a few more for the blip. I was tempted to take them home to roast, but we're busy tomorrow and heading off for a week in Arizona on Saturday. (We'll be birding, hopefully with good photo-ops.) I like to think that the image echoes a bit some cubist paintings by Braque and Picasso in the early nineteen-teens.
LARGE