While photographing Lindera benzoin flowers yesterday I noticed the beautiful emerging foliage of Painted Buckeye (Aesculus sylvatica), also abundant alongside our creek. I love the crinkled texture and blending of colors of their emerging compound leaves, always the first of the native woody plants to unfurl their leaves here in central North Carolina.
Aesculus sylvatica 
I sent pictures to Alani, Bodhisagan, and a few other plant geeks without blogger ids, suggesting that A. sylvatica might be a good subject for a blog post and soliciting their feedback. The consensus was to go ahead and post, but Alani also sent a picture of Red Buckeye (Aesculus pavia) foliage emerging in north Florida, so I've included his picture here too.
Aesculus pavia
Update on March 11: Bodhisagan mentioned that it might be interesting to check on their progress in a few days, so here is a shot of the exact same buds about 48 hours later. As Bodhisagan suspected, they've grown rapidly.
Aesculus sylvatica
Update on March 21: My favorite buckeye of all has now leafed out. It's bottlebrush buckeye, Aesculus parviflora, which has beautiful late spring flowers and stunning bright yellow autumn foliage.
Aesculus parviflora
Update on March 26: Wild Child sent her sketch of a young Aesculus pavia she found in Village Creek State Park, Arkansas on March 20. I thought it was cool so I included it here.
Aesculus pavia 
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