Fascinated by this tree just by the Guild Hall in Faversham, the County Champion for girth and height.
Description: 10 - 30 m. tree, bole to 40 cm diameter. Bark light to dark grey-brown, becoming much lighter, fissured. Red-brown branchlets becoming light-grey. Buds conical, acute. Leaflets 5 - 7, 6 - 16 cm long, 2 - 6 cm wide, obovate to elliptic, long acuminate, acute at base, glabrous to tomentose beneath, dark green, toothed towards apex, petioles 5 - 15 cm. The leaves are said to smell "off" when crushed, hence the foetid buckeye. Good autumn colour.
Peduncles and pedicels are hairy. Flowers in 10 - 15 cm, glabrous to densely hairy, calyx cup shaped to 1 cm, lobes obtuse. 4 pale yellow green fringed petals form the corolla, up to 2 cm long. Upper one with a hairy claw to half its length, lateral ones have a shorter hairy claw and are broader and ovate. 7 long stamens exserted to 2.5 cm, with orange anthers. Light brown ovoid fruit up to 5 cm diameter, more or less prickly, contain 1 - 3 dark brown conkers 2 - 4 cm diameter.
https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/tree/ohio-buckeye
The flowers are probably quite pretty in close-up:
The Buckeye is a very nice tree and the state tree of Ohio, the Buckeye State. People used to carry the nuts in their pockets against rheumatism. All parts of the tree are potentially toxic however. People of the First Nations used to extract tannic acids from the nuts to tan leather and are also said to have used powdered nuts in water to stun the fish. Turned out quite symbolic in the election of President William Henry Harrison, who was from Ohio.
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