THE CALIFORNIA BUCKEYE.
Ae. californica, Nutt.
The California buckeye spreads wide branches from a squat trunk, and clothes its sturdy twigs with unmistak able horse-chestnut leaves and pyramids of white flowers. Sometimes these are tinted with rose, and the tree is very beautiful. The brown nuts are irregular in shape and en closed in somewhat pear-shaped, two-valved husks.
This western buckeye follows the borders of streams from the Sacramento Valley southward; they are largest north of San Francisco Bay, in the canyons of the Coast Range.
Shrubby, red-flowered buckeyes, often seen in gardens and in the shrubbery borders of parks, are horticultural crosses between the European horse-chestnut and a shrubby, red-flowered native buckeye that occurs in the lower Mississippi Valley.