OHIO BUCKEYE; FETID BUCKEYE (Xecubur glabra, Willd ). 20 to 70 feet. Tall tree with small, broad top of spreading branches. Bark ill-smelling, gray, broken into plates; twigs brown, pubescent at first, marked by orange-colored lenticels; buds large, opposite. Wood white, shaded into brown sap wood, close-grained, light, soft, difficult to split, used for artifi cial limbs, woqdenware and pulp. Leaves opposite, compound, yellow-green, smooth, except along midribs, on the paler, under side, 3 to 6 inches long, of 5 (rarely 7) obovate, tapering, saw-toothed leaflets, set at end of a slender petiole.
Autumn color yellow. Flowers greenish yellow, in branched, end clusters, 5 to 6 inches long, in April or May, calyx bell shaped, petals 4, almost alike, upper one often striped with red, stamens 7, curved, thrust far out, hairy, orange-red; ovary hairy, with prickles thickened at base. Fruit, October; globular, 1 to 1f inches in diameter, 3-valved husk, prickly when green, containing brown nut, with white patch. Kernel bitter. Dist.: River bottom land, Pennsylvania to Iowa; south to Alabama, Kansas, Oklahoma. Abundant in Ohio, the " Buckeye State."