SYCAMORE 



Flowers. — May, with the leaves; monoecious, borne in dense 

 heads. Staminate and pistillate heads on separate peduncles. 

 Staminate heads dark red, on axillary peduncles ; pistillate heads 

 light green tinged with red, on longer terminal peduncles. Calyx of 

 staminate flowers three to six tiny scale-like sepals, slightly united 

 at the base, half as long as the pointed petals. Of pistillate' flowers 

 three to six, usually four, rounded sepals, much shorter than the 

 acute petals. Corolla of three to six thin scale-like petals. 



Stamens.— \x\ staminate flowers as many as the divisions of the 

 calyx and opposite to them; filaments short; anthers elongated, 

 two-celled ; cells opening by lateral slits ; connectives hairy. 



Pistil.— OxTixy superior, one-celled, sessile, ovate-oblong, sur- 

 rounded at base by long, jointed, pale hairs ; styles long, incurved, 

 red, stigmatic ; ovules one or two. 



Fruit.— \\\o\\\\ heads, solitary or rarely clustered, an inch in 

 diameter, hanging on slender stems three to six inches long ; per- 

 sistent through the winter. These heads are composed of akenes 

 about two-thirds of an inch in length. October. 



Clear are the depths where its eddies play, 



And dimples deepen and whirl away ; 

 And the plane tree's speckled arms o'ershoot 



The swifter current that mines its root. 



—William Cui.len Bryant. 



The distinguishing peculiarity of the Sycamore is that it 

 "casts its bark as well as its leaves." All trees do this more 

 or less, it is a necessity of life that the bark should yield to 

 the pressure of the growing stem ; and the outer layers be- 

 coming dead fall off in scales or plates of varying size. In 

 the case of the Silver Maple and the Shagbark Hickory the 

 process is not hidden, but the Sycamore proclaims the fact 

 more openly than any other tree of the forest. The bark of 

 the trunk and larger limbs flakes off in great irregular masses 

 leaving the surface mottled, greenish white and gray and 

 brown, sometimes the smaller limbs look as if whitewashed. 

 In winter it can be recognized from afar by this characteristic 

 alone ; and as it likes to grow upon river banks the course of 

 the stream may often be traced for a long distance by the 

 white branches of this tree. The explanation of this is found 

 in the rigid texture of the bark tissue, which entirely lacks 

 the expansive power common to the bark of other trees, so 

 that it is incapable of stretching to accommodate the growth 



26 c; 



