Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Buckeye Leaves

Maybe it comes of growing up on the prairie, where trees are scarce and short-lived. Maybe it's those big, palmately-compound leaves, like tropical trees, or maybe it's the showy flowers and strange fruits that pop open to reveal big brown seeds like deer eyes. The little buckeye trees that shoot up in every disturbed corner around here are favorites of mine.

1 comment:

Larry said...

Young and palmate buckeye shoots are very appealing. I took some photos of some local specimens last year.

The young leaves remind me of paw paw leaves, which always look a bit unhappy until June, when warm nights become common. I think of these two species as southern plants with an intuition of global warming.

We should be seeing armadillos within the next few years in Hannibal; they have been seen several times in St. Louis recently.