The Ohio buckeye is a little tree, but it has given its name to the
Buckeye State. There must have been many of them in the virgin forest
that the Ohio pioneer cut down to make room for his crops of corn and
grain. He noticed these trees particularly because of a disagreeable
odour that comes from the bitter sap. The chopping and handling of these
trees intensifies this odour, which is noticeable even when one drives
past a growing tree.
The name was given by some imaginative person who saw a resemblance
between the smooth brown nuts and the soft brown eyes of a buck. The
white of the eye corresponds to the dash of white on the nut. Deer
abounded in the virgin forests, and no doubt it was one of the first
settlers, a hunter as well as a farmer, who named the tree.
The flowers and leaves resemble those of the horse-chestnut, but are
smaller, as the tree is. The number of leaflets is five, rarely seven,
and they cluster on the end of a long leaf stem. The flowers appear in
April and May, and are not conspicuous, for they are yellowish-green, and
make little contrast with the new leaves.
One thing is to be said in favour of this ill-smelling tree. Its wood has
been found to be the best kind for the making of artificial limbs. To
this special use the lumber is chiefly devoted.
The sweet buckeye lacks the disagreeable odour of the Ohio buckeye, and
its nuts are eaten by cattle. It is a handsome, large tree, with leaves
of five slim leaflets, more or less hairy below, and on the veins above.
The flowers are yellow and showy. Each corolla is drawn out into a tube,
like a honeysuckle’s. The husks of the nuts are smooth. This species
grows from Western Pennsylvania along the mountain slopes to Alabama, and
on the prairies westward to Iowa. The nuts are full of starch, and these
are ground into flour, which is used by bookbinders in making their
paste. The reason why this paste is preferred is that destructive insects
do not eat it as they do paste made of wheat flour.
A red-flowered buckeye tree of small size grows wild from Missouri to
Texas, and east into Tennessee to Northern Alabama. This is not the same
as the red horse-chestnut, which is sometimes seen in cultivation as a
handsome tree, twenty to thirty feet high.
In the far West, the California buckeye is a wide-topped tree of good
size, with leaves of the true horse-chestnut type, and white or
rose-coloured flowers, in showy clusters, and smooth, pear-shaped nuts.
This is the only one of our native species which grows beyond the Rocky
Mountains.