1. [Platanus occidentalis] L. Sycamore. Buttonwood.
Leaves broadly ovate, more or less 3—5-lobed by broad shallow sinuses rounded at the bottom, the lobes broad, acuminate, sinuate-toothed with long straight or curved remote acuminate teeth, or entire with undulate margins, truncate or slightly cordate, or long-cuneate and decurrent on the petiole at base (var. attenuata Sarg.), thin and firm, bright green on the upper surface, paler on the lower, glabrous at maturity with the exception of a slight pubescence on the under side of the thin midrib and stout yellow veins, 4′—7′ long and broad, or twice as large on vigorous shoots and then frequently furnished with dentate basal lobes; petioles stout, terete or slightly angled, becoming puberulous 3′—5′ in length; stipules 1′—1½′ long, entire or sinuate-toothed. Flowers: peduncles coated with pale tomentum, bearing 1 and sometimes 2 heads of flowers. Fruit: heads 1′ in diameter, on slender glabrous stems 3′—6′ in length; akene about ⅔′ long and truncate or obtusely rounded at apex.
A tree, occasionally 140°—170° high, with a trunk sometimes 10°—11° in diameter above its abruptly enlarged base, often divided near the ground into several large secondary trunks, or rising 70°—80°, with a straight column-like shaft free of branches and with little diminution of diameter, massive spreading limbs forming a broad open irregular head sometimes 100° in diameter, their extremities usually erect or more or less pendulous, and slender branchlets coated at first like the leaves, petioles, and stipules with thick pale deciduous tomentum, during their first summer dark green and glabrous, marked by minute oblong pale lenticels, becoming dark orange-brown and rather lustrous during their first winter and light gray in their second year. Winter-buds ¼′—⅜′ long. Bark of young trunks and large branches rarely more than ½′ thick, dark reddish brown, broken into small oblong thick appressed plate-like scales, smooth, light gray, and separating higher on the tree into large thin scales, in falling exposing large irregular surfaces of the pale yellow, whitish, or greenish inner bark, becoming at the base of large trunks 2′—3′ thick, dark brown, and divided by deep furrows into broad rounded ridges covered by small thin appressed scales. Wood the favorite material for tobacco boxes, ox-yokes, and butcher’s blocks, and now largely used for furniture and the interior finish of houses.
Distribution. Borders of streams and lakes on rich bottom-lands; southeastern Maine to northern Vermont and through southern Ontario and Michigan to central and southern Iowa, southeastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, and eastern Oklahoma to the valley of the Arkansas River (Clay County), and southward to western Florida (Gladsden County) central Alabama and Mississippi, and the valley of the Rio Grande (Zavalla County) western Texas; common but most abundant and of its largest size on the bottom lands of streams in the basin of the lower Ohio and Mississippi rivers; less abundant and of smaller size in the coast region of the Carolinas and in western Texas; ascending the Appalachian Mountains up to altitudes of 2500°. The most massive if not the tallest deciduous-leaved tree of eastern North America.
Sometimes planted as a street tree, especially in the cities of eastern Texas; passing into
1. [Platanus occidentalis] var. glabrata Sarg.
Platanus glabrata Fern.
Leaves usually broader than long, truncate, broad-cuneate or rarely cordate at base, 3-lobed by sinuses acute or rounded in the bottom, the lobes long-acuminate, entire, the lateral lobes often furnished near the base with one or rarely with two small acuminate incurved secondary lobes occasionally found also on the terminal lobe, tomentose below and pubescent above when the flowers open the end of March in Texas, later becoming glabrous except on the under side of the midrib and veins, usually about 2¾′—5½′ long and 3′—3½′ wide; petioles pubescent, becoming glabrous. Peduncles bearing one or rarely two heads. Flowers and Fruit like those of the species.