What Is It XXV - Answers

Darla from Florida was the first one to guess. She has some great flowers on her site. My friend Craig from Florida was way off with the caterpillar but it was the funniest. He has one going if you want to take a guess at the animal from my area. LOL

It is the hull from the growing nut of the Ohio Buckeye Tree. This is a photo of all the nuts growing from one flower stem. There will be a big harvest of Ohio Buckeyes this year. Here is my original photo before the crop. They are not sharp spikes and are gone by now when they turn brown.

I will choose someone today as the winner from those of you that said buckeye.

Visitors To The Buckeye Tree

The Bumble Bees are buzzing around the Buckeye Tree. I'm not exactly sure if they are Bumble Bees or Carpenter Bees but my friend Abe Lincoln would know. Check out Abe's' Bird Blog for some great pictures. The Ohio Buckeye Tree is in full glory and should produce a lot of Buckeyes this year.
The Bumblebees are the most frequent and hardest working visitor.

You can see the pollen build-up on some of the legs.
They really dig into their work.
Check out this guy reaching way in to get the nectar for the nest.
There are a few Honey Bees on the tree but not as imposing as the Bumblebees. It has a red pollen build-up on it's leg.
There is also this black and white striped bee on the tree. I'm not sure what it is but it takes a different attack on the blossoms. Maybe Tom from Ohio Nature would know, he is a very knowledgeable naturalist and I learn a lot at his sight.
I made this rare find on one of the leaves a Lady Bug in all its glory.
These bees perform a valuable service to the tree by spreading the pollen throughout the tree.

What Is It XI Final

I have posted so often on the Buckeye Tree in my front yard so I thought it may be an easy guess. I have two things in my front yard. The Ohio Buckeye Tree (a deciduous tree from the Horse Chestnut family) and three varieties of squirrels, Black, Grey and Red (Fox). The squirrels go into the Buckeye Tree in the fall and bury the nuts from the tree to dig up during the Fall and Early Winter. The ones they forget become little Buckeye Trees the next year. I cut at least 30 trees down when I cut my grass this year. The Ohio Buckeye Tree has a yellow flower and the shell of the nut is brown with some small spikes that don't hurt when touched.


So my little plant was not a weed, but a new sapling from a Buckeye a squirrel planted last year. Here is the progression of the buds this spring.

The Buckeye Tree is blooming now and the bees are working on the tree.

Some Buckeyes From the Ground.

I was noticing that there were still a few buckeyes on the ground near the tree. The snow completely melted with the rain and heat. The tree had an abundance of buckeye's this year and the squirrels didn't get these few. The small one was still in the shell which I split open for the photo. I put them on a window ledge for the photo.

Some More Activities From My Youth

Shark Girl's comments reminded me I had only hit on a part of the places Jr and I had played. We did have the advantage of living on the outer edge of a medium size city. You see we had the city advantage of having a city playground with swings, sliding boards, ball field, see-saws and a play area with board games. This is where I was introduced to 'Shoots and Ladders'. A game similar to my business life where you can get ahead by climbing a ladder and fall behind because of a shoot that makes you go backward. Isn't life so much like that?

We also had woods where we played, a larger sandbank area that was higher then our baseball area and woods to play in and a lot of hills to climb. Another one of my best friends Winchie was a big boy although only a year older. He had a Buckeye Tree in his front yard and a Black Cherry Tree in his back yard. I loved both those trees and they were mature trees both at least 4 foot at there base. That Buckeye Tree was the reason I planted a Buckeye tree in our front yard. I still love the taste of Black Cherries. I was the one who ended up climbing the Black Cherry Tree for the fruit.
Jr house was about a mile from my house. I would either walk there or ride my bike. We ran all over the country. We would sleep out on the porch glider at night.

In the winter we would sled ride. The hills on the road made for a fun ride. We could slide two blocks off the hill before we reached the main highway. We loved the really icy snow because you could go a long ways. We had a pond out by Jr house that we used to go skating on once it froze. We also had a manmade skating rink a short walk away over a hill.

We really had a lot of free things to do when we were young.

Black Squirrels

Kent State University has imported a variation of squirrels from London, Ont, Canada. It's black coat makes it a stand-out on the campus. The black squirrels have invaded the whole city. I have had red, gray and black squirrels in my buckeye tree at the same time. I had gray and black squirrels in my yard yesterday. I was able to get pictures of the black squirrel.






Here is a link to a sight about the black Squirrels:
http://www.victoria-park.com/ksu.htm

buckeye tree usage

The buckeye tree itself does have one more usage. Grand son and grand daughter love to climb up into the tree. She goes really high up but he also gets pretty high.

My grand son be sure to wave to look brave.

Here's something to do with the buckeyes. You can use them as Halloween decorations.

My grand daughter is real happy about finishing the greeting.

We got a new Halloween decoration that my grand son loves. The skeleton insults you and sticks it's tongue out at you. My grand son loves it.

buckeye tree

We built the house we are living in about 35 years ago. Since I did the landscaping I wanted to have a buckeye tree because of living in Ohio. The tree was 6 foot high when I planted it. It towers over the house now. Buckeyes are a slow growing tree so it is a strong tree. The tree loses it leaves at the end of August but this happened a little later this year.

Here are the buckeyes in their shell before they drop from the tree. a few leaves are still on the tree but the green color is fading.

There are a lot of buckeyes on the ground. The squirrels are normally stocking up there trees homes for the winter. They also bury the buckeyes for later and I get new little trees growing in the spring. I gave Jedi some buckeyes when he was up north for the marathon.