Two species are recognized—the Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) and the Western Plane (P. occidentalis); but it would probably be more accurate to regard them as geographical varieties of one species, the points in which they differ being small and not very important. Thus the leaves of the Oriental Plane are described as being so much more deeply lobed than those of the Western Plane that the former are botanically described as palmate; but the two forms of leaf may often be found on the same individual. The Western Plane, too, does
not shed its bark in small flakes like the Oriental Plane, but in large sheets.
Planes normally rise to a height of something between seventy and ninety feet, and the trunk attains a circumference of from nine to twelve feet; but there is a record of a portly Plane whose waist measurement was forty feet! Many persons imagine because the leaves of the Plane resemble those of the Sycamore that the two are closely related; but this is not so, and a comparison of the flowers and fruit will show that they are not. The catkins of the Plane take the form of balls, in which male or female flowers are pressed together; and the fruits, instead of being winged samaras, are the rough balls that so closely resemble an old-fashioned form of button, that the tree is known in some parts of the United States as the Button-wood. (It is also known there as Sycamore and Cotton-tree.)
The Plane is supposed to have got its name Platanus from the Greek word platus (broad), in double allusion to the broad leaves and the ample shadow which the tree throws. These leaves are five-lobed, and, as already indicated, those of the Oriental species are much more deeply cut. Further distinction is found in the colour of the petiole or leaf-stalk, which is green in P. orientalis, and purplish-red in P. occidentalis, and in the larger and smoother seed-buttons of the latter. Instead of the leaves being attached to the stem in pairs, as we saw in the Sycamore, those of the Plane are alternate—that is to say, leaf number two of a series will be halfway between one and three, but on the opposite side of the shoot.
The outline of the tree is not so regular as in most others, the leaves being gathered in heavy masses, with broad spaces between, rather than equally distributed over the head. This is, of course, due to the freedom with which the crooked arms are flung about. The pale-brown wood is fine-grained, tough, and hard, and is extensively used by pianoforte-makers, coach-
builders, and cabinet-makers, but is not highly esteemed for other purposes to which timber is put in this country.
The Oriental Plane is popularly supposed to have been introduced to England from the Levant by Francis Bacon, but if Loudon's statement that it was "in British gardens before 1548" rests on good evidence, Bacon's claim is dismissed, for he was not "introduced" until 1561. It was nearly a hundred years later (1640) that the Occidental Plane was first brought from Virginia by the younger Tradescant, and planted in that remarkable garden of his father's in South Lambeth Road. The form that has done so well in London, and of which many fine examples are to be seen in the parks and squares, is a variety of the Oriental Plane, with leaves less deeply divided than those of the type, and therefore more nearly approaching the Occidental Plane in this respect. It is distinguished by the name of the Maple-leaved Plane (Platanus orientalis, var. acerifolia). It is this variety we have chosen as the subject for our photograph.
