Photographs of Large Trees 



413 



was 40 feet and 4 inches in circumfer- 

 ence, and consequently more than 

 13 feet in diameter. Twenty years 

 before. General Washington had meas- 

 ured the same tree, and found it to be 

 of nearly the same size. 



"In 1802 in a journey through the 

 western States, I found on the right 

 bank of the Ohio, 36 miles from Mari- 

 etta, a buttonwood whose base was 

 swollen in an extraordinary manner. 

 My traveling companion and myself 

 measured it, and at 4 feet from the 

 ground we found it to be 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 Genesee. 

 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 Mutianius with eighteen per- 

 sons of his retinue. The interior of 

 this grotto was 75 feet in circumference, 

 and the siimmit of the tree resembled a 

 small forest." 



THE BIGGEST ON RECORD 



But the biggest record is that left 

 by Robert Ridgway, who found the 

 prostrate and largely decayed trunk of a 

 sycamore near Mount Carmel, in Illinois, 

 the crumbling base of which measured 

 66 feet in circumference.^ At 20 feet 

 from this, where the trunk divided 

 into three large limbs, its circumference 

 was apparently 62 feet. There is 

 certainly no other broad-leaved tree on 

 record in North America which equals 

 these dimensions. 



Mention was made, in the quotation 

 from Michaux, of the oriental plane 

 tree (Platantis orientalis), which has 

 been introduced to America and is 

 found in many parts of the United 

 States. It may be interesting to digress 

 long enough to see the size this historic 

 tree reaches. Elwes and Henry,* who 

 have made a particular study of the 

 records of individual trees, write: 



"One of the most remarkable was a 

 tree growing in the village of Vostiza, 

 on the Gulf of Lepanto, in Greece, 

 which measured, in 1842, 37 feet 4 inches 

 in girth at 5 feet from the ground, and 

 was estimated to be 130 to 140 feet in 

 height. This tree is supposed to be 

 the one referred to by Pausanias, who 

 wrote in the second century A. D., yet 

 in 1842 the trunk appeared to be per- 

 fectly sound, though many of the 

 larger branches have succumbed to 

 age and storm. 



"The famous plane of Bujukdere 

 on the Bosporus is not a single trunk, 

 but is formed of nine stems fused 

 together. According to Ch. Martins, 

 in September, 1856, the height was 

 200 feet — evidently an exaggeration — 

 with a spread of branches 373 feet in 

 circumference. One trunk girthed 18 

 feet; two trunks united together for 

 some distance girthed 36 feet, the 

 remaining six trunks being in an ellipse 

 of 76 feet. One of the stems was 

 hollow and afforded stable room for 

 two horses. 



"The tree of the Janissaries, the 

 ancient plane which stands in the Court 

 of the Janissaries in the Old vSeraglio at 

 Constantinople, was 39 feet in girth at 

 3 feet from the ground in 1890. 



"In the British Medical Journal of 

 June 21, 1902, there is an excellent 

 account, with illustrations, of a plane 

 tree in the island of Cos, which from 

 its appearance must be one of the 

 oldest trees in the Mediterranean, if 

 not so old as its somewhat mythical 

 history alleges. Local tradition says 

 that under this tree Hippocrates, the 

 celebrated Greek physician, taught the 

 art of healing no less than 2,300 years 

 ago. . . . Mr. Von Holbach, who 

 measured it, gives the girth of its hollow 

 trunk as 18 meters. 



"Bonvalet, on his way from Samar- 

 cand to Amu, states that he halted at 

 Sarifui, near the residence of the chief, 

 under a plane tree, which was about 

 37 feet in diameter at 6 feet above the 



3 Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum, 1882, p. 288. 



< H. T- Elwes and A. Henry, "The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland," Vol. Ill, p. 623; Edin- 

 burgh, '1908. 



