WESTERN PLANE. 



855 



In treating of trees which, like the Planes, resemble 

 each other in magnitude, form, and general appearance, 

 and in which this resemblance is so obvious as often to 

 cause them to be confounded together, it seems neces- 

 sary to point out the discriminating characters by which 

 the one species can always be distinguished from the other. 

 In the Oriental Plane, fig. 1, the leaves are smaller and 

 much more deeply lobed, or divided into segments, than 

 in the Western tree, fig. 2, and the petioles of the leaves, 



which in the Oriental species are green, in the American 

 tree are purplish red ; the fruit, or ball-shaped catkins 

 also of the Occidental Plane are larger and not so rough 

 externally as those of the other. In magnitude it fully 

 equals if it does not surpass the Oriental Plane, as its 

 height is usually greater and its stem bulky in proportion. 

 Even in England, specimens of the Occidental Plane of 

 no great age are to be met with one hundred feet high. 

 The beautiful tree growing in the palace garden at Lam- 

 beth had, we are informed by Loudon, in 1837, at forty 



2a 2 



