356 PLATANACE^E. 



years' 1 growth, reached that lofty elevation, and another 

 in Chelsea Garden, planted by Miller, was then estimated 

 at upwards of one hundred and fifteen feet in height ; from 

 these instances and many others that might be adduced, 

 it is evident that the growth of this species, when planted 

 in appropriate situations, is more rapid than that of its 

 eastern congener. In America, upon the rich banks of 

 the Ohio, and other great western rivers, where it luxu- 

 riates in a deep moist soil, enriched by the annual slimy 

 deposits of their w r aters, and by the yearly recurring 

 layers of fallen leaves, the American Button-wood attains 

 a magnitude and height which constitute it, as Michaux 

 informs us, " the loftiest and largest tree of the United 

 States." This author mentions a Button-wood tree that 

 his father met with, growing on a small island in the 

 Ohio, about fifteen miles above the mouth of the Musk- 

 ingun, which, at five feet from the ground, measured Forty 

 feet four inches in circumference ; and he himself, on a 

 journey through the western states in 1802, found, on 

 the right bank of the same river, another Button-wood 

 of still more enormous dimensions, its girth, at four feet 

 from the ground, being forty-seven feet, or nearly sixteen 

 feet in diameter. This tree, which showed no symptoms 

 of decay, but on the contrary exhibited a rich foliage 

 and vigorous vegetation, began to ramify at about twenty 

 feet from the ground, a stem of no mean length, but 

 short in comparison to many large trees of this species 

 that he met with, whose boles towered to a height of 

 sixty or seventy feet without a single branch. 



The American Plane is distributed over a great portion 

 of the North American Continent, but is confined by its 

 nature, so Michaux tells us, " to moist and cool grounds. 



