Aesculus californica (Buckeye, California Buckeye) (2024)

FAQs

How to eat California buckeye fruit? ›

The seeds are poisonous to humans in the raw state. Thus, the nuts were cracked open with a rock, the shells removed, the seeds pounded into flour, and their toxic saponins removed in a lengthy leaching process. The meal was subsequently cooked and eaten.

This plant has high severity poison characteristics. Deciduous shrub or sometimes small tree with and open flat-topped crown and short trunk. It has an early leaf drop and is deciduous much of the year revealing its smooth silver-gray bark. Branchlets are reddish gray-brown when young.

The tree is a fast grower and can achieve as much as ten inches in height in one year. After buckeye seeds have been in the ground one full year, they should become established, and will not need continual care.

Medicinal Uses

The seed contains saponins and can be used as an expectorant[94]. The crushed fruit is applied as a salve on haemorrhoids[257]. A decoction of the bark is used in the treatment of toothache and loose teeth[257].

Warning: Ohio buckeye is highly toxic when taken internally.

The Buckeye's Place in History

As well as the belief in the good fortune of its storied seed, the buckeye has been held to cure rheumatism and other, more minor ailments. Pioneering farm families also made soap from the kernels of buckeye seeds, and many a child's cradle was carved from the wood of this tree.

The seeds and husks contain cytotoxic saponins, water soluble compounds with toxicity to fish (Kubo and Ying, 1992; Yuan et al., 2013). Do not plant California buckeye near apiaries as the nectar and pollen in the flowers are poisonous to European honey bees (Stone, 2012).

The fruit is a smooth, pear-like, leathery capsule with between one and three seeds each. Each seed is 2-3 inches, brown and shiny. Each with a pale scar resembling a “buck's eye.” The fruit is poisonous.

Chestnut trees planted in a suitable location can live 800 years or more (all photos by D. Cahill.) Chestnut trees once filled the forests in the Eastern U.S. In the fall, people looked forward to collecting the nuts that littered the forest floor. They roasted the chestnuts or used them to stuff their holiday turkeys.

Aesculus californica is a large deciduous shrub or small tree, up to 4–12 m (13–39 ft) tall, with gray bark often coated with lichens and mosses. It typically is multi-trunked, with a crown as broad as it is high. Trees are long lived, with an estimated lifespan between 250–280 (300 maximum) years.

Where should I plant a buckeye tree? ›

As for soil, Buckeyes are native to the banks of streams and forest floors. They do best in soils that are a silty clay loam, rich in organic matter, slightly acidic and moist but well drained. They can grow in other conditions, but won't do as well if soil is too dry, or very clay-based or sandy.

Interestingly, each tree has both male and female flowers. The female flowers mature into distinctive spiny ball-like fruits.

The fruit matures to a capsule 2–5 cm (1–2 in) diameter, usually globose, containing one to three seeds (often erroneously called a nut) per capsule. Capsules containing more than one seed result in flatness on one side of the seeds.

Chestnut has been called the Bread Tree – it has been a staple in the diet of people all over the world for thousands of years. It is a very high-quality food source, with the nutritional makeup of grain, yet grows on a tree, without annual tillage of the soil, and can bear crops for 100s of years.

A small number of mild side effects such as gastrointestinal complaints, dizziness, nausea, headache, and pruritus have been reported. Because of the coumarin component of horse chestnut, it may interact with anticoagulant drugs, herbs, or supplements, which might affect platelet aggregation.

Although the flowers are toxic to imported honey bees, many native bees and butterflies depend on this source for food. The Buckeye nut is edible, to humans, but it does not have commercial uses. Like the acorn, it requires a great deal of leaching to make it edible.

Soaking the Nuts: After shelling the nuts, place them in a bowl of water and let them soak for 24 hours. This soaking process helps to leach out the tannic acid, making the nuts safe to eat.

Buckeyes taste like peanut butter cups with an emphasis on the peanut butter! Not too sweet, really creamy, and so satisfying.

Here's what you do: Dry your buckeye nuts in the sun for a few days. If you want to speed things up, you can dry them in an over at 200 degrees Fahrenheit (93.3 degrees Celsius) for two hours [source: Buckeyetree]. Mount a dried buckeye nut securely in your vice grips.