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    There are five species of buckeye native to Alabama that range from shrubs to large trees.  Where the ranges overlap hybrids are possible if flowering times also overlap.  They have opposite palmately compound leaves with 5 and sometimes 7 leaflets.  They are in the horse-chestnut family, and can be easily distinguished from the exotic horse-chestnut, Aesculus hippocastanum L., (mistakenly planted to honor some Ohio State All-Americans) that has 7 leaflets and white flowers very different than those of the bottlebrush buckeye, A. parviflora Walter that only sometimes has 7 leaflets.  The other native buckeyes have yellow, red, and/or greenish flowers with the color indicted by the common name in most cases.  The fall leaf color is yellow in all cases, but they tend to drop rather early starting in August if it is dry.  The large dark brown nuts are toxic and can be distinguished from chestnuts that has some hair especially on a pointed end.  They were used by Native Americans who put crushed seed into stream to stun the fish, which would then float to the surface for easy capture.  Now the most common use of the nut is as a good luck charm, which supposedly only works if you keep it in your pocket so nobody else ever touches your buckeye, but good luck charms only prove that you have skills (such as just keeping up with it) that often lead to success in other areas.

    Yellow Buckeye, A. flava Aiton, is the largest native species, and currently the only one with a champion tree in Alabama although a red buckeye nominated for 2011 is pending.  The state champion yellow buckeye is 125 feet tall, 86 inches around the trunk, and has a branch spread of 54 feet.  It grows is Madison County on property owned by the city of Huntsville where it was nominated by the city naturalist.  Yellow buckeyes are found mostly in the mountains from extreme northeast Alabama to Pennsylvania where the bedrock is limestone and soil is moist, but not saturated thus they are often near ephemeral streams.

    Ohio buckeye, A. glabra Willd., is the next largest tree and is found scattered mostly in northwest Alabama. It has greenish flowers and spiny husk unlike the other native species.

    Red buckeye, A. pavia  L. is one of the smallest and is often seen flowering when only a few feet tall.  The flowers are bright red and as a result there is a common name firecracker plant.  Even though borne terminally on new growth they are blooming before most other trees break dormancy.  This has led to the belief that hummingbirds time their spring arrival with the red buckeye bloom, but hummingbirds range wider than red buckeyes and actually utilize sapsucker wells on other trees such as maples, birches, hickories, and yellow-poplars that have plentiful sweet sap that also attracts insects that are also important to the diet of both bird species.

    Painted buckeye, A. sylvatica Bartram, which is also know as Carolina buckeye, was discovered by William Bartram in the mid 1770s.  It is intermediate between red and yellow buckeye in mature size, flower color, and even detailed flower structure, which is the only good keys for distinguishing it from the others.  Additionally these three hybridize the most frequently due the large overlap of range and almost simultaneous flowering around early April.  Painted buckeye is found in the mountains and Piedmont from the Carolinas through north Alabama, but primarily just the eastern half.  The obscurity and difficulty in finding and confirming an accessible specimen has likely prevented there being a state champion.

Bottlebrush buckeye is the premier choice of buckeye for landscape use because of the long terminal namesake plume of white flowers after the leaves have reached maturity in May plus the shrub size and form allowing it to fit in most landscapes.  Because the seed are only viable for a few days they must be planted immediately after they dehisce and otherwise desiccate, therefore, the natural habitat tends to be the moistest of all the buckeyes all of which are usually found near a reliable water water source.  It is suitable for shade like all buckeyes, which are among the first trees to leaf out in the spring, but more sunlight increases the number of flowers that are produced.  The form can be maintained as a small tree or allowed to become a colonial shrub.