154 THE FRUITS Oh THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



both in the Septuagint and the English revised Version 

 this is translated as plane. The tree is abundant in 

 Palestine, and its Hebrew name, Armon, is derived from a 

 root signifying nakedness, in allusion to this habit of 

 throwing off its clothing. The tree bears smoky town 

 life better than most others, and is therefore often planted 

 in urban enclosures and thoroughfares. In one case that we 

 know of where this was done the vestrymen, with whom 

 knowledge of plant-life appears not to have been a strong 

 point, directly their planes began to shed their bark, issued 

 an indignant "whereas," offering a goodly reward for the 

 detection of the offender. 



The leaves, as our illustration shows, are very pleasing 

 in form, cut into deep segments, and having their margins 

 sharply indented. The curious enlargement at the base of 

 the leaf-stalk will be noted. Soon after the opening of the 

 leaves the flowers appear. They are individually very 

 small, the staminate flowers being on different stems to the 

 pistillate, but each collected into globular catkins, or 

 " buttons."^ These buttons vary in number in each cluster 

 from about two to five, and are borne on long pendant 

 stems. In our figure one will be seen cut through the 

 centre. The seeds ripen in October or November. 



The plane-tree has been held to be a great purifier of 

 the air, preventing plague and other epidemic diseases, while 

 the fruit, the leaves, and the bark have all been regarded 

 as of great remedial efiicacy, from the mending of a cut 



' Gerard does not, in 1597, mention the plane-tree as growing in England, 

 but he tells us that the Surgeon of the Hercules^ of London, knowing his 

 interest in such matters, " brought one of these rough buttons, being the fruit 

 thereof," to him, from Lepanto. 



