Most of my plant posts are on my sonoma blog site, but the buckeye is interesting and prevalent enough that I wanted to share this with the AR audience. Ohio is the Buckeye state, of course, but buckeyes occur over much of North America. In California we have Aesculus californica, the only native buckeye to the state. It's also called a horse chestnut by many people.

This is a shrub or small tree for the most part, although it can grow to almost 35 feet tall. From my point of view as a frequent driver of backroads the spectacular impression the blooming buckeye makes is its most important characteristic. The flowers are big, abundant, fragrant, and striking against the green foliage of the tree. It's hard to miss these, and most people driving around California this time of year are presented with great displays from these broadly dispersed trees.

The other claim to fame for the buckeye comes from the adaptation to the California climate, More natives can handle the dry weather with their foliage intact, but the buckeye blooms early and loses its leaves before any other trees in the natural landscape. There are whole hillsides that look dead by the end of the summer, but it's just the buckeyes biding their time until they can put on another spectacular display near the end of May and beginning of June.

There's more information about the fish stunning power of the poisonous fruit and the ways the native Americans processed these for food, but you can google that. I just wanted to introduce you to this wonderful tree you may have passed many times, but never known about.