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Aesculus californica

July

Have I been particularly lucky with my seedling California Buckeye? Year after year in late June it bends low under the weight of hundreds of white candles of the familiar intricate horse-chestnut design, touched with pink and yellow. By late August the branches are bare except for hundreds of dangling conkers like little figs in soft fawn jackets to distribute to friends. One seedling from it is already half the size of the parent tree.

My champion plant is a souvenir of a Napa Valley picnic at vintage time in 1982. I was on my way to the airport when I noticed that the broad bushy buckeyes were covered in fruit, picked some and planted it at home within 24 hours. I couldn’t have imported anything that could give me more satisfaction.

Buckeyes can be dismissed as more bush than tree: they have a single trunk, but it soon divides into a dozen long branches. My plant is now 20 feet high by 30 wide. Its leaves appear as early as March, much smaller than a horse chestnut’s; perhaps six inches across, of a unique slightly metallic deep sage green. I have never seen them damaged by frost. By early autumn they have gone, some turning briefly yellow. The buckeyes are a family we underrate in this country, although the wide-spreading July-flowering Aesculus parviflora from the south-eastern states has extraordinary merit.

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