SAPINDACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 61 
44SCULUS CALIFORNICA. 
Buckeye. 
PeTA.s 4, nearly equal, much shorter than the stamens. Fruit smooth. Leaves 
4 to 7-foliolate. 
A&sculus Californica, Nuttall ; Torrey & Gray, FZ. N. Am. iii. 78. — Koch, Dendr. i. 513. — Brewer & Watson, Bot. 
i. 251; Sylva, ii. 69, t. 64. — Hooker & Arnott, Bot. Voy. Cal. i. 106. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census 
Beechey, 327.— Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1225. — Walpers, Rep. U.S. ix. 48. 
1.424; Ann. vii. 624. — Bentham, Bot. Voy. Sulphur,9; Calothyrsus Californica, Spach, Ann. Sci. Nat. ser. 2, ii. 
Pl. Hartweg. 301. — Rev. Hort. 1855, 150, f. 10, 11. — 62; Hist. Veg. iii. 35. 
Torrey, Pacific R. R. Rep. iv. 74; Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. Pavia Californica, Hartweg, Jour. Hort. Soc. London, ii. 
48; Bot. Wilkes Explor. Exped. 260. — Newberry, Pacific 123. 
kk. R. Rep. vi. 20, 69, £. 1. — Bolander, Proc. Cal. Acad. 
A widely branched tree, rarely thirty or forty feet in height, with a short stout trunk two or three 
feet in diameter, and often expanded at the base to twice that size; or more often a shrub with spread- 
ing branches ten or fifteen feet high, forming broad dense thickets. The bark of the trunk is a quarter 
of an inch thick, smooth, and light gray or nearly white. The winter-buds are acuminate and covered 
with narrow dark brown scales rounded on the back and thickly coated with resm. The branches are 
glabrous and pale reddish brown when they first appear, becoming darker in their second season. The 
leaves are composed of from four to seven, but usually of five leaflets, and are borne on slender grooved 
petioles three or four inches long; the leaflets are oblong-lanceolate, acute, narrowed, and obtuse or 
somewhat rounded at the base, sharply serrate, four to six inches in length and one and a half to two 
inches in breadth, with slender petiolules half an ‘inch to an inch long ; they are dark green above, 
paler below, slightly pubescent when they first unfold, and glabrous or nearly so at maturity ; they fall 
early, often by midsummer, leaving the branches naked for a large part of the year. The imflorescence, 
which appears from May to July when the leaves are fully grown, is long-stemmed, three to six inches 
in length, and covered with thick fine pubescence. The flowers are an inch or more long with short 
pedicels; they are mostly unilateral on the long branches of the thyrsus, and are white or pale rose- 
colored. The calyx is two-lobed, slightly toothed, and much shorter than the narrow oblong petals. 
The stamens, which vary in number from five to seven, have long erect exserted slender filaments and 
bright orange-colored anthers. The ovary is densely pubescent. The fruit is obovate, pear-shaped, and 
often somewhat gibbous on the outer side, with very thin smooth pale brown valves; it 1s usually one- 
seeded, two or three inches long, and is borne on rather slender stems a quarter to half an inch in 
length. The seed is an inch and a half to two inches broad. 
Aisculus Californica is distributed from the valley of the upper Sacramento River in Mendocino 
County, California, along the coast ranges to San Luis Obispo County, and on the western foothills of 
the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the northern slopes of the Tejon Pass in Kern County, with an extreme 
station in Antelope valley of the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles County.’ It is found on the 
borders of streams, which it enlivens in spring and early summer with its abundant and showy flowers, 
and reaches its greatest size in the cations of the coast ranges north of San Francisco Bay. 
The wood of Zsculus Californica is soft, light, and very close-grained, with numerous obscure 
medullary rays. It is white or faintly tinged with yellow, the thin sapwood, composed of ten or twelve 
layers of annual growth, being hardly distinguishable. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood 
is 0.4980, a cubic foot weighing 31.04 pounds. 
1 §. B. Parish. 
