The Buttonwood
Platanus occidentalis, Linn.
Our eastern buttonwood is a tree to which, in America, we supply the name sycamore. Its European counterpart is the plane tree of the Old World. It is one of the easiest trees to recognize, for its most prominent trait is fairly shouted at us from a distance, whenever one of these trees comes within the range of our vision. The smooth bark that covers the branches is thin, very brittle, and has the habit of flaking off in irregular plates, leaving white patches under these plates that contrast sharply with the dingy olive of the unshed areas. On old trunks the bark is reddish brown and breaks into small, irregular plates; but above, and out among the branches, the tree looks downright untidy, and as though it had been splashed with whitewash by some careless painter. (See illustrations, [pages 102-103].)
White birches grow in copses in low ground, a whole regiment of their white stems slanting upward. But the ghostly sycamore is apt to stand alone along the river-courses, scattered among other water-loving trees. The tree is wayward in its branching habit, its twigs irregular and angular. When the leaves are gone, it is a distressed-looking object, dangling its seed-balls in the wind until the central, bony cob is bare, the seeds having all sailed away on their hairy parachutes.
In the warmer South our buttonwood is a stalwart, large-limbed tree of colossal trunk, that shelters oaks and maples under its protecting arms. And there are some large specimens on Long Island.
The buttonwood leaf in a general way resembles a maple's, being as broad as long, with three main lobes at the top. The leaf stem forms a tent over the bud formed in summer and containing the leafy shoot of the next year. The leaf scar, therefore, is a circle and the leaf base a hollow cone. At first a sheathing stipule, like a little leafy ruffle, grows at the base of each leaf, but this is shed before midsummer.
Oriental Plane
P. Orientalis, Linn.
The oriental plane is almost as familiar a tree as our native species, for it is planted as a street tree in every city and village, and is a favorite shade and lawn tree besides. The city of Washington has set the example and so has Philadelphia. One third of the street trees of Paris are plane trees.