PLATANACE.E 



375 



ramento River (Tehama County) southward through the interior valleys, along the west- 

 ern foothills of the Sierra Nevada and on the southern coast ranges; and on Mount San 

 Pedro Martir in Lower California; exceedingly common in all the valleys of the California 

 coast ranges from Monterey to the southern borders of the state, and ascending the 

 southern slopes of the San Bernardino Mountains to altitudes of 3000-4000. 



3. Platanus Wrightii S. Wats. Sycamore. 



Leaves divided by narrow sinuses to below the middle and sometimes nearly to the 

 center into 3-7 but usually into 3-5 elongated acute lobes entire, or dentate with callous- 

 tipped teeth, or occasionally furnished with 1 or 2 lateral lobes, sometimes deeply cordate 

 by the downward projection of the lower lobes, or often truncate or cuneate at base, thin 

 and firm in texture, light green and glabrous above, covered below with pale pubescence, 

 6'-8' long and broad, with a slender midrib, and primary veins connected by conspicuous 



Fig. 334 



reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, glabrous or puberulous, l|'-3' in length. Flowers: 

 peduncles hoary-tomentose, bearing 1-4 heads of flowers. Fruit: heads on slender gla- 

 brous stems 6'-8' long, about f in diameter; akenes glabrous, \' long, truncate at apex. 



A tree, often 60-80 high, with a straight trunk 4-5 in diameter, gradually tapering 

 and free of branches for 20-30, or with a trunk divided at the ground into 2 or 3 large 

 stems usually more or less reclining and often nearly prostrate for 15-20, thick con- 

 torted branches, the lowest growing almost at right angles to the trunk and 50-60 long, 

 the upper usually erect at first, finally spreading into a broad open handsome head, and 

 slender branchlets coated when they first appear with thick pale tomentum, becoming 

 glabrous or slightly puberulous during their first winter, marked by minute scattered len- 

 ticels, and light brown tinged with red or ashy gray, and gradually darker in their second 

 or third year. Winter-buds hardly more than $' long. Bark at the base of the trunk 

 dark, 3'-4' thick, deeply and irregularly divided into broad ridges, and covered on the 

 surface with small appressed scales, thinner and separating into large scales 10-15 above 

 the ground, and gradually passing into the smooth much thinner creamy white bark 

 faintly tinged with green of the upper branches. 



Distribution. Banks of streams in the mountain canons of southwestern New Mexico 

 and southern Arizona; in northern Arizona in Oak Creek Canon near Flagstaff (P. Lowell); 

 and in Sonora; the largest and one of the most abundant of the deciduous-leaved trees on 

 all the mountain ranges of southern Arizona, extending from the mouth of canons up to 

 altitudes of ,5000-6000 above the sea. 



