DENDROLOGY. 249 



United States. Often with a trunk of several feet in diameter, 

 it begins to ramify at the height of 60 or 70 feet, near the 

 summit of other trees ; and often the base divides itself into 

 several trunks equally vigorous and superior in diameter to any 

 of the surrounding trees. On a little island in the Ohio, fifteen 

 miles above the mouth of the Muskingum, M. Michaux mentions 

 a buttonwood which, at five feet from the ground, was 40 feet 

 and 4 inches in circumference, and consequently more than 13 

 feet in diameter. He mentions another on the right bank of the 

 Ohio, thirty-six miles above Marietta, whose base was swollen in 

 an extraordinary manner ; at four feet from the ground it was 47 

 feet in circumference. This tree, which still exhibited the 

 appearance of vigorous vegetation, ramified at 20. feet from the 

 ground. A buttonwood of equal size is mentioned as existing in 

 Genessee. The astonishing dimensions of these trees recall the 

 famous plane tree of Lycia spoken of by Pliny, whose trunk, 

 hollowed by time, afforded a retreat for the night to the Roman 

 Consul Licinius Mutianus, with eighteen persons of his retinue. 

 The interior of this grotto was 75 feet in circumference, and the 

 summit of the tree resembled a small forest. The most striking 

 resemblance, in the majesty of their form and in the enormous 

 size of their trunk, thus appears to exist between the only two 

 species of plane that have hitherto been discovered. The 

 American species is generally thought, in Europe, to possess a 

 richer foliage, and to afford a deeper shade than the Asiatic 

 plane : its leaves are of a beautiful green, alternate, from five to 

 fifteen inches broad, less deeply lobed, and formed with more 

 open angles than those of the plane of the Eastern Continent. 

 In the spring the lower surface of these leaves is covered with a 

 thick down, which disappears towards summer. The sexes are 

 separate, but the male and female flowers are attached to the 

 peduncle, instead of being placed on different branches. The 

 flowers are in the form of small balls : the fertile ones grow to 

 the diameter of an inch, and are supported by peduncles two or 

 three inches long. These balls fall in the course of the autumn 

 and winter, and, parting asunder, the seeds which compose them 

 3*2 



