YELLOW BUCKEYE 



(ALsculus Octandrd) 



species and one variety of buckeye are native in the United 

 States, yellow buckeye, Ohio buckeye, California buckeye, small 

 buckeye, and purple buckeye. They belong in the horse chestnut family. 

 The so-called Texas buckeye is in a different family, and is not a true 

 buckeye, but is close kin to the soapberry. The buckeyes are named 

 for the large white spot on the smooth, brown nut, resembling the eye of 

 a deer. The yellow buckeye is the most important of the group, is the 

 largest and most abundant. It is known by the name of buckeye in 

 North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, 

 and Kentucky. It is called sweet buckeye hi West Virginia, Mississippi, 

 Texas, Missouri, and Indiana, probably owing to the fact that it does not 

 exhale the disagreeable odor characteristic of other members of the 

 family. Yellow buckeye is the term applied to it in South Carolina and 

 Alabama; large buckeye in Tennessee; big buckeye in Tennessee and 

 Texas. It flourishes from Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, southward 

 along the Alleghany mountains to northern Georgia and Alabama, 

 westward along the valley of the Ohio river to southern Iowa, through 

 Oklahoma and the valley of the Brazos river in eastern Texas. It 

 thrives best along streams and in dense, rich woods. It reaches its 

 fullest development on the slopes of the Alleghany mountains hi North 

 Carolina and Tennessee. 



The leaves of the buckeye are compound, with from five to seven 

 leaflets; flowers appear in May or June and are dull yellow; the fruit 

 is a large brown nut, one or two of which are enclosed in a rough, uneven 

 husk, about two inches or more in diameter. The tree grows from forty 

 to 100 feet in height, and attains a diameter of from one to three and a 

 half feet. 



Buckeye grows intermingled with poplar, oak, maple, beech and a 

 variety of other hardwoods. From its comparatively limited growth 

 as compared with the totality of the average hardwood forest, it never 

 has been recognized, and probably never will be, as a distinctive type 

 of American commercial wood. The timber is felled with the other 

 valuable trees surrounding it, and its appearance, when manufactured 

 into lumber is so similar to that of the sap of poplar or whitewood that 

 almost without exception it is assorted with poplar saps, and goes on the 

 market masquerading as that wood. There is probably not one lumber- 

 man in a thousand, handling poplar, that is able to distinguish buckeye 

 from sap poplar in his shipments of that wood. 



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