Ohio buckeye

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Arizona Mountains forests

Atlantic coastal pine barrens

Blue Mountains forests

Central Tallgrass prairie

Central-Southern Cascades Forests

Chilean Matorral

Colorado Rockies forests

Cross-Timbers savanna-woodland

A medium-to-large native shade tree of central and eastern North America, reaching 50 to 80 feet with an ovate-rounded crown and large, asymmetric heart-shaped leaves. In June it carries pale-yellow, intensely fragrant flowers on pendulous cymes - each cluster hung from a distinctive strap-like leafy bract - that ripen into pea-sized nutlets. The fragrant June bloom is a premier nectar source: Missouri Botanical Garden lists it as attracting bees and butterflies, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as having special value to both native and honey bees.

What it needs

Conditions

Light

Full sun / Part shade

Water

Consistent moisture

Spacing

25 ft

Habit

Deciduous small-to-medium tree, generally 20 to 40 feet tall and wide in cultivation, with an oval to rounded crown. Its coarse, palmate foliage creates dense shade: excellent for cooling a moist site, but too dense for a durable lawn directly below. It is among the first trees to leaf out in spring and one of the first to lose its leaves in autumn.

Care tips

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Use rich, moist, well-drained soil and keep it evenly moist while the tree establishes; that is the simplest prevention for scorch and blotch problems.

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Design the ground plane for shade from the outset. Dense foliage makes grass difficult below the crown, so use mulch, shade groundcovers, or a woodland-floor planting instead.

•

Place it where early spring flowers and early autumn leaf drop both make sense, rather than relying on it as a late-season privacy or shade screen.

Lifecycle

Planting

Plant in spring or autumn in rich, moist, well-drained soil. It accepts full sun where the ground does not dry out, but a streamside, bottomland-style lawn, or moist woodland edge is closer to its native habitat. Allow a 20 to 40 feet crown and do not expect turf to persist in the deepest shade.

Transplanting

Plant young container-grown or field-grown trees in their permanent place. Move them while dormant with a generous root ball; a tree that has begun to build a substantial buckeye root system is not an easy later move.

Early growth

Keep the root zone consistently moist and mulch broadly while it establishes. Avoid hot, droughty exposure: those conditions are where leaf blotch, scorch, and other physiological or pest problems become serious.

Maturity

A settled Ohio buckeye is low-maintenance in a moist site, where Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center reports disease and insects are not a problem. Rake or mulch the early fallen leaves if their timing matters to the setting, and prune only for sound structure or dead wood while dormant.

Propagation

Sow fresh seed in autumn, or moist-stratify it for roughly 120 days at 41°F before sowing. The large seeds should not be allowed to dry before they are started.

Similar plants

Browse lateral options with similar roles, light needs, size, or native-range overlap; these are not filtered for a better climate fit.

Tilia americana

American basswood

The only native U.S. holly with both spiny green leaves and bright red berries - an upright, pyramidal, broadleaf evergreen tree that slowly matures to 15 to 30 feet in cultivation (to 50 feet in the wild). Thick, leathery, deep green leaves bear spiny marginal teeth, and pollinated female trees carry showy red-to-orange drupes that ripen in fall and persist through winter as bird food. This is the classic "Christmas holly" of wreaths and decorations.

A tough, medium-sized native tree of the eastern and midwestern United States, grown as much for its showy edible orange fruit as for its distinctive thick, dark gray bark broken into rectangular blocks. Small urn-shaped white-to-greenish-yellow flowers open in May and June, and the sweet fruit ripens after frost. Largely dioecious - a female tree needs a male pollinizer nearby to set fruit - and notably drought- and walnut-tolerant once established.

A small native deciduous tree (or thicket-forming, suckering shrub) of eastern and central North America, grown for clouds of fragrant white 5-petaled flowers that open in March before the leaves and for the edible red plums that follow in early summer. It forms a broad, spreading crown with attractive dark reddish-brown twigs that sometimes carry thorny lateral branchlets. A documented larval host for swallowtails and other butterflies, with flowers of special value to native, bumble, and honey bees.

The largest native cherry of eastern North America - a medium-to-large deciduous shade tree that hangs elongated racemes of small white flowers in spring, then ripens drooping strings of pea-sized fruit from red to near-black in late summer. The fragrant white bloom feeds bees while the fruit is eaten by 33 species of birds and many mammals; it is also a workhorse larval host, supporting the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and a string of giant silk and sphinx moths. Every part except the ripe fruit is cyanide-bearing and toxic.

Full sun / Part shade

A unique native shrub or small tree of eastern North American woodland margins, producing fragrant yellow strappy-petaled flowers in October through December when nothing else is blooming - the only North American native pollinated primarily by noctuid moths in cold weather. Yellow fall foliage doubles as background to the late-season bloom. Host for the witch hazel dagger moth (Acronicta hamamelis) larvae.