The Ides of March are portentous for Ohio buckeyes. The smallest mature plants are blooming today, but tree-sized individuals will require more time to transfer nutrients out of taproot storage. Following the gradient of increasing temperature from suburbia into the city, a tree at my house blooms a week after one inadvertently saved by a school in the city center. However, Ohio buckeye leaves turn yellow and begin to drop in July or August before any other trees, so they appear to be dying and are often cut down -- the eventual fate of the downtown individual.

Do we lack curiosity about this unusual native? Is it lack of patience to wait a year to find out what's going on? Perhaps it's our penchant for control -- for manicured landscapes that don't allow trees to lose leaves before we think they should. Ohio buckeye has a very different lifestyle that begins its growing season now, well ahead of most other trees, puts energy for next year into a taproot, and avoids summer heat and drought by becoming dormant early. This tree is nearly leafless by September, adding visual diversity to the forest's gallery of living art.

Local Ohio buckeyes usually have seven narrow leaflets instead of five broad ones and are considered a distinct variety or species. Yet their showy flowers are yellowish white with reddish touches, arrayed on five-inch, upright clusters at the twig tips, as they are in Ohio. Although beautiful alone, when decorated by feeding butterflies and day-flying hummingbird moths, the blooms are extra special. Some flowers develop into round, dark brown seeds, each with a tan spot that looks like a deer eyeball, encased in a golf ball-sized tan pod that dangles like a Christmas tree ornament until it opens and the buckeye falls out in October.