Buckeye

About five years ago I bought a seedling of an Ohio Buckeye tree.  We planted it in our front year, near where our old weeping birch tree had once stood.  That birch tree died of old age and we finally had to cut it down a decade or so ago.  

We saw a buckeye on a neighbors property a few blocks away and really liked the tree.  We tried to grow a seedling of our own from a seed, but were unsuccessful.  Finally I bought a seedling and we planted it in the yard.  I seem to recall that I bought three or four of them, and only the one survived.  For the first year or two nothing really happened.  But we watered it in well, and made sure it was wrapped with burlap over the cold winter months.  In the past couple of seasons it has started to do really well.  What started out as a little seedling less than a foot high, is now a healthy sapling, nearly six feet tall.  We love the beautiful yellow-orange color that the leaves turn in the fall.  This year, for the first time, the tree produced three nuts.  One died part way through the summer, but two of them matured.  We recently picked them up from where they had fallen on the lawn.  I always wondered why they were called buckeyes, but in seeing these I realized what they were named after.  They have the almond shape and dark color of the eye of a deer.

We hope that this tree survives and thrives in our yard for many years to come.  It should eventually become a medium sized tree, about 30 feet tall.