110 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



ite avenues where the Grecian philosophers were accustomed 

 1o resort, were planted with these trees; and beneath their 

 shade Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, delivered the choicest 

 wisdom and eloquence of those classic days. The Eastern 

 plane, [Platanus orientalis,) was first brought to the Roman 

 provinces from Persia, and so highly was it esteemed, that, 

 according to Pliny, the Morini paid a tribute to Rome for the 

 privilege of enjoying its shade. To that author we are also 

 indebted for the history of the great plane tree which grew 

 in the province of Lycia, which was of so huge a size, that 

 the governor of the province, Licinius Mutianus, together 

 with eighteen of his retinue, feasted in the hollow of its 

 trunk. 



In the United States, the plane is not generally found 

 growing in great quantities in any one place, but is more or 

 less scattered over the whole country. In deep, moist, allu- 

 vial soils, it attains a size, scarcely if at all inferior to that of 

 the huge trees of the eastern continent ; forming at least, in 

 the body of its trunk, a larger circumference than any other 

 of our native trees. The younger Michaux [Sylva, 1, 325. ) 

 measured a tree near Marietta, Ohio, which at four feet 

 from the ground was found to be forty-seven feet in cir- 

 cumference ; and a specimen has lately been cut on the 

 banks of the Genesee river, of such enormous size, that a 

 section of the trunk was hollowed out, and furnished as a 

 small room, capable of containing fourteen persons.* On the 

 margins of the great western rivers, it sometimes rises up 

 seventy feet, and then expands into a fine lofty head, surpas- 

 sing in grandeur all its neighbours of the forest. The large 



* A buttonwood on the Montezuma estate, Jefferson, Cayusa Co., N. Y,, is 

 forty-seven and a half feet in circumference; and the diameter of the hollow two 

 feet from the ground, is fifteen feet. {K. Y. Med. Repository, IV, 427.) 



