BUCKEYE. So handsome and rapid of growth is the buckeye tree that in spite of a very disagreeable odor exhaled by the bark and leaves, it has been adopted as an ornamental shade tree in all sections where it will grow. The trees are unusually tall, with slender branches, and the broad five-fingered leaves grow in umbrella-like clusters, covering the tree with dark luxuriant foliage. Throughout the year the buckeye is a favorite with children. In the spring the snowy white and yellow flower clusters are a source of delight and in the summer they play in the tree's cool shade.
In the autumn they gather up the glossy brown "buckeyes" as they drop from the prickly burrs; and in winter the large buds, folded away in capes of polished brown, hold a promise of spring's return.
The wood of the buckeye has been found excellent for making artificial limbs, and quantities of it are used for paper pulp. The country people make soap from the sap, and from the nuts is manufactured a flour which is used to make shoemaker's and book binder's paste. The nuts are extremely bitter, if not poisonous. Ohio has been called the Buckeye State from the prevalence there of the common buckeye.
In the Alleghenies, as far south as Georgia, grows a species of the tree called the sweet or yellow buckeye.
This lacks some of the disagreeable odor of the more common Ohio type, and the fruit is eaten by cattle.
The flowers are yellow and showy. A red-flowered buckeye of small size grows wild in certain parts of the southern states. The English buckeye, which has been transplanted to this country, is often called by us the "horse-chestnut." It is a very large tree and has big clusters of white, pale yellow, or pink flowers.
The wood is soft and pulpy and has no commercial value. Japan also has a species of its own, and yet another species grows on the Himalaya Mountains.
The name " buckeye" is probably derived from the likeness which the smooth brown nut, with its light brown spot, presents to the eyes of a deer.
Scientific name of the common buckeye, Aesculus glabra. Flowers pale yellow, growing on short pedicels in close panicles. Leaves palmately compound. opposite and sharply serrate. Bark dark brown, separating into thin pieces.