California Buckeye (Aesculus californica) Login         


        Description
  • Height 12 - 40 ft.
  • CA Bloom May - Jul
  • Buckeye trees are conspicuous from afar; pale green leaves in early spring, full of flowers in early summer, and bare-branched well before other trees lose their leaves in the fall.
  • Each aromatic flower has 4 pink or white petals and long stamens.
  • The fruit resembles a buck's eye - brown and about 2 inches across.
  • CA native
  • AKA Buckeye, Horse Chestnut, California Horse Chestnut
  • Soapberry Family (Sapindaceae)



Buckeye trees become covered with columns of sweet-smelling flowers.



5-part compound leaves are palmate (shaped like a hand). Leaf edges are finely-toothed and bud in early February.


Trees in the open form a dome shape, often growing 40 feet tall and 40 feet wide. They can live 250 years.

   Photo Gallery (108 ) click any picture to enlarge
    

California Buckeye is [[endemic]] to the [[California Floristic Province]] and is well adapted to our Mediterranean climate. It does most of its gr ...
Adapted to California's warm, wet winter season, the California buckeye starts leafing out in January, well before other deciduous trees. Its early l ...
Each leaf is composed of five to seven leaflets that join at a common point (a palmate arrangement). They're arranged in pairs on opposite sides of t ...
Sweet-smelling blossoms cover the tree in May, a welcome sign of spring! Flowers cluster in tight, upright cylinders, typically about five or six i ...
Showy buckeye blooms attract a wide range of native bees, flies, beetles, and migrating butterflies, providing both pollen and [[nectar]]. It is one ...
Most flowers are male only, offering plenty of pollen for pollinators to pick up and carry between trees. Only a few flowers produce female pistils ...