Brian Riley, a senior in forestry at Ohio State, had no idea a highway detour and a photography shoot would lead him to the largest Ohio buckeye tree in the nation.
While driving to New London, a closed bridge caused Riley to be diverted onto State Route 13 – Greenwich Township in Huron County – and a sight surprised him.
“I saw out of the corner of my eye what seemed to be a really large Ohio buckeye tree,” Riley said. “I quickly turned around, pulled into the owner’s driveway and asked to measure the tree.”
The tree was 77 feet tall.
“The tree was so big you’d think it’s on steroids,” Riley said.
This striking discovery made the tree the second-largest Ohio buckeye tree in the nation. The reigning national champion since 1973 is located in Kentucky.
The grandiosity of this new tree prompted Riley, an intern at the Ohio Division of Forestry, to venture to Kentucky to take pictures of the national champion, which is recorded at 148 feet tall.
“I thought, ‘If this tree is our largest tree, we’ve got to go down and see how large the national tree is,'” Riley said.
While in Kentucky, Riley made another unexpected discovery – the champion was a hoax. The tree was a yellow buckeye, not an Ohio buckeye.
The two trees are somewhat similar and visually differ in height and nut size. The yellow buckeye produces larger nuts and can grow between 20 to 30 feet larger than the Ohio buckeye.
Karen Fulton, a senior in landscape horticulture and staff member at the Chadwick Arboretum, said despite the two trees being different types – the Ohio buckeye is Aesculus glabra, the yellow buckeye is Aesculus flava – they are similar.
“There’s a lot of similarities,” Fulton said. “I would imagine that unless you see the fruit, they might look the same.
Riley collected the fruit and saw the difference.
Mark Lee, landowner education specialist at the Kentucky Division of Forestry, said the misidentification was an honest mistake and many factors probably contributed to the error.
“First, the limbs are 50 feet in the air and in the same woods with Ohio buckeyes,” Lee said.
He also said the trees are on steeply sloping grounds.
“So a forester in the ’70s would have picked up Ohio buckeye fruits under the tree and thought it was a Ohio buckeye,” Lee said.
To check the tree’s identity, Lee shot down a limb from the tree and called in a professor from the University of Kentucky, who confirmed the tree was a yellow buckeye. He said after being classified, trees are only checked every five years to be measured.
American Forests declared Riley’s discovery the national champion last week, and both Riley and the Ohio Division of Forestry said they are happy about the findings because it makes the Greenwich Township tree the largest Ohio buckeye tree in the nation.
“We were confident if we looked hard enough, we would find a national champion in Ohio,” said Andy Ware, assistant chief of the Ohio Division of Forestry.
Riley said the turn of events was an exciting surprise.
“This was completely unscripted,” he said.
Despite being caused by happenstance, Riley is happy the title is in Ohio, and points out his discovery happened in 2003 – the same year the Ohio State Buckeyes won the national championship in Tempe, Ariz. So the state has two national champions.
