TRUNK OF A BUTTONWOOD
Page [119]
“The buttonwood throws off its bark in large flakes, which one may find lying at its foot, pushed out, and at last pushed off, by that tranquil movement from beneath, which is too slow to be seen, but too powerful to be arrested. One finds them always, but one rarely sees them fall. So it is our youth drops from us—scales off, sapless and lifeless, and lays bare the tender and immature fresh growth of old age.”
Bryant says in his poem, “To the Green River”:—
“Clear are its depths where its eddies play,
And dimples deepen and whirl away,
And the plane tree’s speckled arms o’ershoot
The swifter current that mines its root.”
Gray calls the buttonwood our largest tree, and Emerson alludes to it as “the largest, grandest, and loftiest deciduous tree in America;” while Gilpin says that “no tree forms a more pleasing shade than the occidental plane.”
The wood takes a good polish and is used for making furniture, ox yokes, and for the interior finish of houses.