Buckeyes: Just Go Nuts! - ADVENTURESS Magazine (2024)
Finding your luck, one buckeye at a time
By Jennifer Pudenz
I was a squirrel in another life… I’m sure of it. I’m home 20 feet up in an oak tree and I can’t get enough when it comes to buckeyes – ha! I don’t know what it is about these nuts, but I can’t walk by one without picking it up… and I always have one in my pocket while I’m hunting.
Maybe it goes back to my childhood. Sometimes in the fall, my parents would put my brother and I in our old pickup, drive across the pasture, clear down this rough, rocky terrain, across a creek and then through the timber would emerge this beautiful open grass bottom. That ride was fun enough itself, and that view stunning, but then on the edge of this field was our destination… a lone buckeye tree. It’s engraved into my mind and created an appreciation for this tree and nut that will last my lifetime.
Just like a rabbit’s foot, horseshoe or four-leaf clover, buckeyes are thought to attract good fortune from carrying one in your pocket or rubbing your thumb along it.
Native Americans believed it looked like a male deer’s eye, hence the name ‘buckeye.’ Each nut has it’s own characteristics, making them fun to collect, examine and compare. The smooth round buckeye has a beautiful gloss at first with unique rich, brown marbling. However, as the buckeye ages, it shrivels, the surface wrinkles, the gloss fades and the marbling becomes a deep, dark brown. It is said you can rub your favorite buckeye along the side of your nose to keep it oiled. While I haven’t tried that, you can apply lacquer to a dried buckeye to keep the gloss look.
Buckeye nuts come in a round or oblong spiny capsule and can commonly contain one, two, three, four or maybe even five buckeyes! Sometimes it’s great to see how many you can find in one shell, and sometimes it’s fun to hope for just one really large round one trying to find the biggest buckeye!
These spiny shells attached to the trees are very tight and hard early on, but as fall progresses, the shells start to soften, crack open and even drop to the ground.
Anytime in the fall is a good time to look for buckeyes, starting in September. It’s a great activity to bring friends and family, including young kids, as you enjoy a beautiful fall walk as you search.
Try Your Luck
Buckeye trees are a deciduous tree of the Horse Chestnut Family and native to Midwestern and Lower Great Plain regions in the United States, extending southeast into the Nashville Basin. Preferring moist and rich organic soil and shady conditions while young, buckeye trees are an understory tree primarily found in bottom lands.
One way of locating buckeyes is looking near low-lying ground for bare understory trees without leaves, as buckeye trees are the first to lose their leaves in the fall. If you plan ahead, you can also easily spot them in the spring as they are one of the first trees to leaf out in the spring, sporting showy yellow-green flowers. Their leaves palmate out in a group of five long, broad leaflets.
Unlike Any Other Nut
Unlike most nuts, buckeyes are actually poisonous, and squirrels are known as the only animal to consume them. The leaves are also toxic. Containing tannic acid, buckeye nuts cannot be eaten unless heated and leached.
Native Americans used to extract the tannic acid for making leather and ground the nut into a coarse powder, casting it into rivers and ponds to stun or kill fish. While none of these are practiced today, buckeyes can still be enjoyed.
Besides being just fun to find and collect, today, buckeyes are mainly dried and made into necklaces (for example, very popular for Ohio State University’s sporting events since they are known as the Buckeyes). I love to make Christmas ornaments out of them to give to family and friends with a small note about buckeyes – click the buckeye ornaments photo to see how I make them!
Jennifer Pudenz is owner/editor of ADVENTURESS magazine.
During September, buckeyes, which are large, shiny brown seeds, can be found underneath Aesculus trees. According to legend, carrying a pocketful of buckeyes brings good luck. Early Native Americans called these seeds buckeyes for their resemblance to the eyes of male deer, known as bucks.
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.
Poisonous Plant: All parts of the plant (leaves, bark, fruit) are highly toxic if ingested – because of the glycoside aesculin, the saponin aescin, and possibly alkaloids. Symptoms are muscle weakness and paralysis, dilated pupils, vomiting, diarrhea, depression, paralysis, and stupor.
While gray squirrels and other animals do eat buckeyes, it is never a preferred food. In fact, both the seeds and tender young leaves of the plant are said to be poisonous to humans and livestock alike. Humans have long made use of the red buckeye. Native Americans were known to crush buckeye branches to catch fish.
Do deer eat buckeyes? No, they don't. Buckeyes are poisonous to ruminants like cattle, so deer are not far behind. Buckeyes are also toxic to humans and many other animals, so you need to consider the drawbacks before choosing to cultivate them.
A good place for viewing is Rancho Cañada del Oro Open Space Preserve. In April, its small reddish flowers appear. Interestingly, each tree has both male and female flowers. The female flowers mature into distinctive spiny ball-like fruits.
Horsechestnut fruit are strongly spiny, leathery and contain one or two shiny brown seeds, which are called conkers in Europe. Horse-chestnut is similar to Ohio buckeye but is not quite as hardy and does not grow as tall. It also differs in having larger flower clusters and cream-colored flowers.
They were carried as a folk remedy to ward off rheumatism, hemorrhoids and other assorted ailments. But mostly, it was considered a lucky charm. An old saying went, “You'll never find a dead man with a buckeye in his pocket.” Our native Red Buckeye (Aesculus pavia) is possibly my favorite landscape plant.
Native Americans once used buckeyes for both nutritional and medicinal purposes. These tribes would crush and knead the nuts into a salve for rashes and cuts. Today, some believe that buckeyes can relieve rheumatism and arthritis pain.
If you carry a buckeye in your pocket, it'll bring you good luck. Just like a rabbit's foot or a horseshoe or a four-leaf clover, the buckeye attracts good fortune. When you first put one in your pocket, in the fall, right after the nut-like seed has ripened, the buckeye is smooth and round.
Ohio buckeye is also referred to as stinking or fetid buckeye because the leaves and twigs give off an unpleasant odor (skunk-like) when crushed. The buckeye portion of the name derives from the fruits, which are mahogany brown with a large gray spot, resembling a buck's eye.
While Buckeye nuts can be planted directly in the soil outdoors in autumn, starting them indoors will prevent squirrels from digging up the nuts before they germinate next spring.
Superstitious thinkers believe carrying a buckeye nut in your pocket will ward off bad luck. But, for the most part, the trees and their nuts are relatively impractical. The bark smells bad. The wood does not burn well and the nut is poisonous.
Here are two ways to care for buckeye seeds you collect in autumn: Put them in moist peat moss and refrigerate them. Or plant the nuts in a container and let them sit through the winter until they sprout in the spring.
Some even believed that carrying a buckeye nut could bring good luck similar to a rabbit's foot or a four-leaf clover. The buckeye continued to resonate with Ohioans and became the state tree in 1953.
Any part of the plant, if ingested, is poisonous but just touching it is not harmful. Farmers have been known to remove the buckeye tree from fields where cattle graze to prevent the animals from eating any part of the tree.
Ohio buckeyes and horse chestnuts are closely related. Both are types of Aesculus trees: Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra) and common horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). Although the two have many similar attributes, they aren't the same.
Hobby: Reading, Ice skating, Foraging, BASE jumping, Hiking, Skateboarding, Kayaking
Introduction: My name is Cheryll Lueilwitz, I am a sparkling, clean, super, lucky, joyous, outstanding, lucky person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
We notice you're using an ad blocker
Without advertising income, we can't keep making this site awesome for you.
