Ohio Buckeye

Ohio Buckeye
Aesculus glabra

The Buckeyes beat Michigan today!! Of course Michigan kind of sucks this year, so it's no big surprise.

The Buckeye is the nickname for Ohio State University, being the state tree of Ohio. So, how did Ohio get to claim this tree as its own in the first place?

Native Americans gave it the name Buckeye because the nut looks like an eyeball the size of which might belong to a deer. The "Ohio" part of the name is a longer story. Back in the early 1800's, the Buckeye tree was commonly used for making cabins, at least in Ohio where it is a rather common tree. During the 1840 presidential campaign, William Henry Harrison, who was from Ohio, wanted people to believe that he was "simple folk" who lived in a cabin in Ohio and he used the Buckeye as a campaign icon, making walking sticks from Buckeyes, small cabins on floats made from Buckeye logs, and whiskey bottles in the shape of a cabin and so on. He even had a campaign song:

“Oh where, tell me where was your buckeye cabin made?Twas built among the merry boys who wield the plough and spade,Where the log cabins stand, in the bonnie buckeye shade.Oh what, tell me what is to be your cabin’s fate?We’ll wheel it to the capital and place it there elate,for a token and a sign of the bonnie Buckeye state.”

He won the election and ever since then, Ohio became known as the Buckeye state and the Buckeye became the Ohio Buckeye. Of course he died one month later from pneumonia.