Where are all the Buckeye Trees?

[ohiomosquito]

Hello everybody!!!  My name is Beau and I'm looking for buckeyes!  I am a born and raised Ohio native and cannot find any buckeye trees.  I have these clear lamps in my living room that you can fill up with items as a special decor and my wife has determined that she wants to fill them up with buckeyes.  I have taken my family on a few nature walks in search of buckeyes and cannot find them anywhere.  I live in Wadsworth Ohio, Close to several Cuyahoga National Parks.  Can anybody give me any suggestions on how or where to find buckeyes that I can pick up and clean myself?  I have seen buckeyes for sale on the internet but that wouldn't be the same.  I know the season for finding them is coming to a close soon so any help in finding these golden jewels of Ohio would be greatly appreciated.   

Until then,

Ohio Mosquito, Beau

[KarenCharin0]

Hi, Ohiomosquito, that is good, I like that name choice, that is cute and so true. I live in the bottom of a valley beside a crick, Portage ditch, it's about 20' wide and 6-8 feet deep, depending if the beavers have it damed up or not. We've been getting a lot of ran to keep it filled up there. I don't take care of the yard like I used to. so that makes it worse. I was talking to one guy on line that had a terrible bad reaction to using off.. he said he moved to where there where more mosquitoes then what he was used to and tried off for the first time and had a really bad reaction to it. Allergic to it he was sick for 2 years almost died. I always spray it on my clothes mostly, they say it stains but it's my out side clothes and my water stains too, the softener wasn't working right and I gave up trying to keep salt in it.

Any way, so nice to have you post here and such a good question too. Actually I was going through some searches fort my buckeyetree.net site and  noticed several were for the question where can I find buckeyes. Where can I find a buckeye tree. I thought that day I would do some research on that it would make a really good topic for me to tell people about so I'm so glad that you asked about this as I was just going to do some research and find out different places. I had one link I'd found and think I have up somewhere of there are buckeye trees out OSU. The link also talked about the other trees they have there and where they are at and any story behind planting them. That is something about all my trees, I've lived here for 30 years and have all kinds of trees, and they all have some kind of story behind them when we planted them and why, like an anniversary or to celebrate something. Our anniversary was always a good time to plant new trees because it was the right time of the year and our anniversary.

The one I know about is from when I was a child. My dad was born in a little town called Trail Run. Two of his sisters still lived in the family home and we would go to visit them at least once a year for decoration day of the graves there. and maybe around Christmas time. But when I was younger we went to visit more often. There were still a lot of people down there dad wanted to stay in touch with but as I grew up more of them were gone so there was less reason to go down there. Dad was the youngest in his family and he was 44 years old when I was born. He had three other children to his first wife. Mom was an upper middle child in a large family like dads. Most of mom's family lived around us. When we would turn off the rode to go to visit dad's sisters there was a really big old one room Church with big steeple and a grave yard in the back. and in the grave yard was this really big old buckeye tree. So that is where I'd get my buckeyes in a church yard in Trail Run, I'd go for walks while all the adults talked and I found the buckeye tree. I'm 53 now and haven't been down there in a really long time so I don't know if that tree is still there or not.

But I will dig around and see what I can find out about buckeye trees in your area and maybe other areas too. I'll get back to you as soon as I find anything out.

Really glad to see you here Beau!!!!!

It seems to me being close to to several National Parks that we should be able to find something out them having buckeye trees. I'll check that out first.

[KarenCharin0]

Wadsworth Ohio

Cuyahoga National Parks


http://www.nps.gov/cuva/naturescience/plants.htm

Cuyahoga Valley

Here's what I found about the trees there... they are growing in groups of oak-hickory, maple-oak,

It says here too that September was the time that monarchs feed in Cuyahoga goldenrod and New England aster fields. They are like re-fueling sites for the monarchs  on there way to Mexico City, 2,000 miles away.


http://ohiodnr.com/tabid/5343/Default.aspx

snip

Ohio Buckeye, the state tree of Ohio, is found primarily as an understory tree in the western half of Ohio, where the soils are more alkaline in pH. However, it is scattered throughout the eastern half of the state, except in extreme northeastern and extreme southeastern Ohio.


I looked around a little didn't find anything yet. I don't remember every running across anyplace stateing we have buckeye trees..... I do remember reading one arctical that talked about a lot o farmers cut them down so that the live stock wouludn't eat the buckeyes. That might be why they are hard to find.