
BUCKEYE FAMILY. Hippocastanaceae. 
BUCKEYE FAMILY. JHippocastanaceae. 
A small family, widely distributed; trees or shrubs, with 
opposite, compound leaves, no stipules and terminal 
clusters of irregular flowers, some perfect and some with 
- only pistils or only stamens; the calyx tubular or bell- 
shaped, with five, unequal lobes or teeth; the petals four 
_ or five, unequal, with claws; the stamens five to eight, with 
long filaments; the ovary superior, with no stalk, three- 
celled, with a slender style; the capsule leathery, roundish 
or slightly three-lobed, smooth or spiny, with one to three, 
large, polished seeds. 
There are a good many kinds of Aesculus, or Horse 
Chestnut, natives of America and Asia; the leaves pal- 
mately compound, with toothed leaflets; the flowers of 
two sorts, the fertile ones few in number, near the top of 
the cluster, with long, thick styles, and the sterile flowers 
with short styles. 
One of our handsomest western shrubs, 
California usually from ten to fifteen feet tall, with 
ee gray bark, and dark bluish-green foliage, 
Califérnica the leaflets from five to seven in number, 
White glossy on the upper side, pale and dull on 
Spring, summer the under, and firm in texture. The 
gna flowers have a rather heavy scent and are 
about an inch across, with four or five, slightly irregular, 
white petals, which become pink in fading, a pinkish ovary 
and long stamens with curling, white filaments, unequal in 
length, with buff anthers. They are crowded in a mag- 
nificent, pyramidal cluster, about a foot long, which has a 
pinkish-red, downy stem, and the buds are also downy 
and pinkish, so that the color effect is warm-pink above, 
merging into cream-white below, the whole made feathery 
by the long stamens. The shrub has a rounded top of rich 
green foliage, symmetrically ornamented with spires of 
bloom, standing up quite stiffly all over it. The large, 
leathery pod contains a big, golden-brown nut, supposed 
to be poisonous to cattle. The leaves fall off very early in 
the season, leaving the pods hanging on the bare branches. 
This is at its best in the mountain valleys of middle Cali- 
fornia, sometimes becoming a good-sized tree. 
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