fireworks! the bottlebrush buckeye celebrates
AS IF IT KNOWS THAT FIREWORKS ARE CALLED FOR this weekend, the biggest old bottlebrush buckeye here, Aesculus parviflora (above), is in full bloom. Pow! A 15-foot-wide by 12-foot-tall mass of high energy, with each bloom more than a foot tall. Happy Fourth of July from me and my beloved old shrub (whose dramatic tale you can read here).
Margaret,
Thank you for sharing this shrub with us a while back. I had to put my cat down this weekend. I decided to take his ashes home and bury them in the spot in the garden that he used to run out and sniff because a baby deer slept on it. My cat had such a big, antic personality. Now that I know about it, the bottlebrush buckeye seems the perfect shrub to plant in his memory.
Oh, lovely! I have a much smaller bottlebrush Buckeye (maybe 6 by 4?) that I can see from my kitchen window as I work. It is almost finished blooming now, so it is a treat to see yours still in all its splendid glory. I am very fond of the texture of its leaves as well.