THE PLANES 151 



watered with wine ; and it is found by experience 

 that the same is very comfortable to the roots," w T e 

 have some notable specimens, as at Highclere, and 

 at Weston Park, in Shropshire, where there is a 

 tree eighty feet high, spreading 100 feet, and having 

 a girth of eighteen and a half feet at five feet from 

 the ground. 



The true Oriental Plane has a rounded outline, 

 a leaf with a wedge-shaped base, and deeply five-lobed, 

 and generally two or more " buttons " in the fructifi- 

 cation. The Spanish variety has very slightly divided 

 leaves, and most of our London Plane-trees belong 

 to an intermediate form (P. orientalis acerifo'lia) 

 somewhat resembling the Sycamore in its leaf-outline. 

 Of this form there are many fine specimens in and 

 around the metropolis, as in Berkeley, Bedford, and 

 Mecklenburg Squares, and the well-known trees in 

 Wood Street, Cheapside, and in Stationers' Hall 

 Court. The latter was planted by Mr. Broome, treas- 

 urer of the Company, about seventy-five years ago, 

 There are also fine specimens, over 100 years old, at 

 Stanwell Place, Staines, and at Shadwell Court, 

 Norfolk ; and down to 1881 a magnificent tree of 

 equal age was standing in the garden of Lambeth 

 Palace, where a fine representative still lingers. 



The Western Plane is far less common with us. 

 It has a looser outline, differing, it has been said, 

 from the Oriental kind in this particular, as a Pear- 

 tree does from an Apple ; its leaves are divided to a 

 moderate depth, and are scarcely at all wedge- 

 shaped or tapering at the junction of the blade 

 with the stalk; and the fruiting branch commonly 



