Bottlebrush buckeye
Aesculus parviflora
Buckeye, horse chestnut, or sweet chestnut? These species, popularly confused, have similar fruit in a prickly capsule, but the leaves are quite different. In a buckeye or horse chestnut they are palm-shaped and consist of several smaller ones, while the flowers are of different colours depending on the species: white or red, forming upright panicles. In Poland, they traditionally come into blossom before the end-of-school exams.
Unlike the fruit of the sweet chestnut, those from the buckeye should not be eaten, but they provide irreplaceable material for children’s games and plays in the autumn. In Lusławice Park, more than 80 buckeye trees grow in both the old and new sections, including this wide-stretching, bush-like small-flowered species.