YELLOW BUCKEYE
(Æsculus Octandra)

Four 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 in 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 in 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 lumberman in a thousand, handling poplar, that is able to distinguish buckeye from sap poplar in his shipments of that wood.

Sawmills make no distinction between the different species. All that comes is buckeye, but nearly all of it is the yellow species, though doubtless a little of all the others is cut into lumber and veneer, or goes to the slack cooperage shop, or to the pulp mill. The woods of all are quite similar, and they are used for the same purposes. If one is employed in larger quantities than another, it is because it is more convenient, or of better form or larger size.

Early uses of buckeye were as important as those of the present day, though amounts were smaller. Many an Ohio statesman of former times boasted that, as a baby, he was rocked in a buckeye sugar trough for a cradle. They claimed with pride that the prevalance of the custom caused Ohio to be known as the buckeye state, a name which clings to it still. Next to yellow poplar, buckeye was considered the best wood from which to hew the small troughs which collected the sugar water from the tapped maples in early spring; but the range of buckeye did not extend northward into the real maple area, and the troughs like those which rocked the inchoate Ohio statesmen were unknown in the North, but were familiar along the mountain ranges southward. Dough trays, bread boards, chopping bowls, and troughs in which to salt bacon and pork, were hewed from buckeye by farmers and village woodworkers.

It weighs 27.24 pounds per cubic foot; is diffuse-porous, and the slight difference between the wood grown in spring and that of late summer renders the annual rings indistinct. It has little figure, no matter how it is sawed; medullary rays are thin and obscure. Softness is one of the principal qualities, and it is also weak, and is wanting in rigidity. These are its faults, but it has virtues. It is tasteless and odorless, and these properties make it valuable in the manufacture of boxes in which food products are shipped. The reported cut of buckeye in the United States is from 11,000,000 to 13,000,000 feet a year. The reports of factories which use the wood in making commodities throw light on the question of actual use. North Carolina works 10,000 feet a year into cabinets and office fixtures; Michigan 100,000 into candy and chocolate boxes, dishes, and bowls; Maryland uses 200,000 feet yearly for practically the same purposes, but with the added commodities of spice drawers and tea chests. Makers of artificial limbs consider buckeye one of their best materials, but it is second to willow. The “cork legs” are usually either buckeye or willow. Pulp mills grind the wood for paper, but it is not separately listed in pulp statistics, and the total cut cannot be stated. It is converted into veneer and finds many places of usefulness, but here, also, no separate figures are to be had.

The nuts are large and abundant, but almost wholly useless for man or beast. Bookbinders make paste of them, as a substitute for flour, and with satisfactory results. The paste resists ferments much better than that manufactured from flour; but the demand upon the nut supply for that purpose is very small. Squirrels and other small animals leave buckeyes alone. Some writers, whose acquaintance with this tree was apparently acquired at long range, state that the nuts are food for cattle. No person with knowledge of the buckeye says that. Cattle occasionally eat a few, but are poisoned thereby, and if they recover, they never again have anything to do with buckeyes.

This tree is ornamental during a few months of the year. Its flowers are attractive, and its large, vigorous leaves and conspicuous fruit are admired in summer; but early in the fall the leaves come down, the husks burst from the nuts and strew the ground with unsightly fragments. The tree is seldom planted, but the horse chestnut, a foreign species, takes its place.

Ohio Buckeye (Æsculus glabra) was once thought to be more abundant in Ohio than elsewhere, hence the name; but its best development is in Tennessee and northern Alabama. The disagreeable odor emitted by the bark gives it the names fetid and stinking buckeye, and it is known also as American horse chestnut. Its range is approximately the same as that of yellow buckeye, but it is a smaller tree, rarely more than thirty feet high, though it is seventy in exceptional cases. In common with other trees of the species, it prefers rich soil along water courses. The wood was formerly in demand for chip hats, but that use has apparently ceased. The sapwood is darker than the heart which is an exception to the general rule. Dark streaks, probably stains due to fungus, occasionally run through the trunk. In weight, strength, and stiffness the wood is approximately the same as yellow buckeye. Its odor is sufficient to distinguish it from that species, and it associates with no other except on rare occasions when it may be found with the small buckeye in western Tennessee and southern Missouri.

California Buckeye (Æsculus californica) occurs only in the state whose name it bears. It is a short, much-branched, ill-formed tree; root large and shaped somewhat like an inverted tub, often standing a foot or more above the ground, and the branches rising from it. A tree so formed is without value to the general lumberman, but cabinet makers sometimes grub out the root and saw it transversely into thin lumber or veneer and make small articles which possess considerable figure, due to the involved growth, but little variety of color. Its tone is light yellow. The tree is found in the central part of California, from near sea level up to 4,500 in the Sierra Nevadas. It gets away from the immediate vicinity of water courses and grows on hillsides. It is heavier than any other American buckeye, and has very thin sapwood. The other properties of the wood, and the botanical characters of the tree are common to other members of the species. The seeds depend for their dispersal on running water, when the tree grows by a stream, or on gravity, if situated on a hillside. The seed will not grow unless buried in moist soil, and it retains its vitality only a few months. Few trees in the United States have larger seeds than buckeyes. The tree is short-lived, reaching maturity in most cases in less than a hundred years. It is sometimes planted for ornament in this country and in Europe.

Small Buckeye (Æsculus austrina) is one of the latest recognized members of the buckeye household. It seldom attains a diameter above five or six inches, or a height of twenty-five feet. It is, therefore, too small to be seriously considered as a source of lumber, and even if trunks were large enough, the species is too scarce to furnish many logs. It grows on rich uplands from western Tennessee and southern Missouri to Texas. The bright red flowers open in April, the fruit falls in October.

Purple Buckeye (Æsculus octandra hybrida) is a variety characterized by red or purple flowers and by leaves woolly on the under sides, and bark of lighter color than that of yellow buckeye. The range follows the Appalachian mountains from West Virginia southward. It has been reported in Texas also. If the wood is used at all, it goes for the same purposes as yellow buckeye.