Trees with dark or ashy-gray colored bark; twigs stout; buds large, leaves opposite, palmately divided into 5-9 ovate or oblong divisions, the divisions serrate; flowers in terminal panicles; fruit a 3-lobed capsule. The fruit is poisonous to stock, although it rarely proves fatal.
| Anthers protruding from the flower; fruit warty | [1 A. glabra.] |
| Anthers included in the flower; fruit smooth | [2 A. octandra.] |
1. Æsculus glàbra Willdenow. Buckeye. [Plate 116.] Medium to large sized trees[62]; bark of old trees fissured, not tight; branchlets robust; twigs at first more or less pubescent, remaining more or less hairy until maturity; leaves large, 5-foliate, rarely 6 or 7 foliate, petioles more or less pubescent; leaflets sessile or on very short stalks, ovate-oblong, oval-oblong, or obovate, about 1 dm. long, acuminate, narrowed to a wedge-shaped base, more or less pubescent beneath until maturity, especially along the principal veins, margins irregularly serrate except near the base; flowers generally appear in May when the leaves are almost full size, but in the southern part of the State the flowers sometimes appear the last of March, flower clusters 1-1.5 dm. long, the whole inflorescence usually densely covered with white hairs, flowers pale-greenish yellow; fruit a globular spiny capsule, generally 3-6 cm. in diameter, which usually contains 1-3 large glossy chocolate-colored nuts.
The pubescence on the petioles, leaflets and inflorescence is generally white, but often with it are reddish and longer hairs which are scattered among the other hairs, except in the articulations of the flowers, pedicels and leaflets, where they appear in tufts.
Distribution.—Pennsylvania south to Alabama, west to Iowa and south to the Indian Territory. Found in all parts of Indiana. It is usually associated with beech, sugar maple and linn. On account of the poisonous character of its fruit, land owners have almost exterminated it.
From the data at hand it appears that the buckeye was a rare tree in the northern tier of counties. However, as soon as the basin of the Wabash is reached it becomes a frequent to a common tree where beech, sugar maple, and linn are found. In all of our area it prefers a rich moist soil, except in the southern counties it may be found even on the bluffs of streams with the species just named. In the lower Wabash Valley especially in Posey County it was a rare tree, or entirely absent.
