THE ORIENTAL PLANE. 379 
its bark so freely as the Western Plane, a fact 
which is doubtless explainable by the difference in 
the rate of growth—for it is the rapid growth of 
the trunk in Occidentalis and the comparative in- 
elasticity of the bark tissue which occasion the 
rupture of the latter. The fruit catkins are not 
so large, but are rougher externally than those of 
the Western Plane. It frequently grows to a 
height of more than seventy feet, has a wide 
spread of branches—which sometimes ‘ feather,’ 
to use a popular expression, to the ground— 
a thick trunk and altogether a noble and very 
beautiful appearance. 
But it is in its leaves that the most ready 
distinction between the two species of Plane is 
furnished, the indentations in those of Orientalis 
being much more deeply cut than in those of its 
western relative, and having less of the light golden 
hue, which is so characteristic of Occidentalis. The 
upper lobe, through the centre of which runs the 
principal vein, continuing in an almost straight 
line from the leaf-stalk, is especially prominent, 
from the circumstance that the indentations which 
separate it from the two lobes on each side of it 
Zz 
