MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BULLETIN 81 
is the gray balls or seed pods hanging from the twigs. Dur- 
ing summer the thickest foliage rarely conceals the scarred 
trunk and excoriated branches splotched as if with white- 
wash to the top. Moulting is a continuous performance dur- 
ing the growing season, and even during the winter flakes 
of bark may be picked up around the surface roots. The tree 
seems utterly lacking in the power to stretch its bark fibers 
and fill in the chinks to fit the growing limbs. Instead, with 
the first rift, syeamore bark loosens, separates, and falls, 
leaving only the inner layers between the tender cambium 
and the cold atmosphere. 
The fact that the sycamore will withstand the smoke nui- 
sance so detrimental to plant life makes it a desirable city 
shade tree. John Parkinson, writing of the European plane 
tree in ‘‘Apothecarye of London,’’ in 1840, refers to the 
early use of the sycamore as a street tree: ‘‘They are planted 
by the waysides and in market places for the shadows’ sake 
only.’’ Certain venerable European sycamores, according to 
Julia Ellen Rogers, are estimated to be 4,000 years old. They 
measure as much as 40 feet in trunk diameter, but are so 
perforated by decay that it is impossible to count the annual 
rings, even when the tree falls. Very few trees attain a 
ereater age. Some people object to the use of sycamores as 
a street tree because during the unfolding of the leaves a 
fuzzy covering of branched hairs is cast off which is supposed 
to be irritating to the mucous membrane of the eyes and 
throat. However, this moulting period is so short that it 
is often unnoticed by those who have lived in the neighbor- 
hood of sycamores for years. 
Description—A large stately tree 75-150 feet high, with 
tall trunk and loose broad head and mottled green and 
white limbs. Bark dark reddish brown on trunk, breaking 
into small scaly plates, smooth and thin on branches, olive- 
green, flaking off in irregular plates, exposing whitish inner 
bark. Wood light reddish brown, hard, heavy, with promi- 
nent satiny pith rays. Buds conical, with hood-like scales, 
covered by hollow base of leafstalks and encircled by a single 
leaf scar. Leaves deciduous, alternate, simple, 5-6 inches 
long, 7-9 inches broad, 3—5-lobed, with broad shallow sinuses 
and wavy-toothed lobes, yellow-green above, paler beneath, 
and fuzzy on veins, yellow and papery in autumn; petiole 
