The Sycamores 



The Oriental Plane Tree (P. orienialis, Linn.) is the species 

 best known in Europe, and is coming to be very popular in this 

 country. It is a shapelier tree than our own, more compact in 

 habit, with larger leaves, and three or four seed balls are strung 

 on each long stem. So far it seems almost immune to fungous 

 diseases, a very important consideration to the planter. This is 

 the plane tree of the Greek writers, in groves of which Plato 

 walked and discoursed — a tree held in worshipful esteem by the 

 ancients for its stateliness and beauty. On occasions they poured 

 wine upon its roots and decked its limbs with jewels and gold. 

 Xerxes halted his unwieldy army for days that he might contem- 

 plate to his satisfaction the beauty of a single tree. He had its 

 form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him to remember it the 

 rest of his life. Xerxes never did things by halves. 



Certain venerable plane trees in Europe are estimated to be 

 4,000 years old. Very few species of trees attain a greater age. 

 These patriarchs are giants as well. They measure as much as 

 40 feet in trunk diameter, though they are so perforated by decay 

 that counting rings is impracticable even when the tree falls. 

 These old trees are at best but shattered ruins, supported in their 

 senile age by columns and braces — melancholy figures, indeed, 

 renewing feebly each spring by their few leaves the youth they 

 had spent and quite forgotten centuries before the dawn of civilisa- 

 tion. It is almost pitiful that they should live on. 



Quaintly does John Parkinson, "Apothecarye of London," 

 write of plane trees in the year 1640: "They are planted by the 

 waysides and in market places for the shadowes sake onely." 

 Quite sufficient justification for any tree in any age, that it tem- 

 pers the heat of the sun in places Vvhere men must congregate. 

 "For the shadowes sake" is a phrase worth remembering! John 

 Parkinson seems to have been a poet as well as an apothecary. 



The generic name of these trees comes from the Latin plains, 

 which means "broad." It refers to the breadth of the leaf. A 

 species platanoides is found in many genera; it means "like the 

 sycamore." The swamp white oak sheds its bark in sheets. In 

 the Norway maple the shape of the leaf is much like that of the 

 sycamore. 



The common name of this tree has had an interesting history. 

 The original sycamore was a fig tree of the ancients — Pharaoh's 

 fig, they called it in Egypt. Their strong mummy cases were 



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