184 PRACTICAL FORESTUY. 



ing before the leaves. Seed ovate, covered v^ith warty scales. 

 A small tree forty to fifty feet high, in low, moist boUs, in 

 North Carolina and southward. Not quite hardy north of Phila- 

 delphia, except in very favorable sheltered situations. The 

 Japanese species or Kiaka Elm (P. acuminata) is a far more" 

 hardy and robust growing tree than our native species. It has 

 large, glossy, smooth leaves, on red stems. The young shoots 

 are also red. A handsome and desirable ornamental tree. The 

 Caucasian Planera, P. parvifoUa, also thrives very well in New 

 York and vicinity. 



PLATANUS, Tour. — Buttonwood, Syzamore, Etc. 



A genus of about a half dozen species, all but one inhabiting 

 North America. Large trees, with very close, smooth bark, 

 which, as the stem and branches enlarge, breaks up-and falls 

 ofiE in large flakes. The flov^ers are in dense, globose, naked, 

 unisexual heads, mingled with minute hairy scales, forming a 

 dry, rough, one-celled, and one-seeded fruit, pendulous, and 

 usually remaining on the trees until late in winter. All the 

 species and varieties may be readily propagated with ripe wood 

 cuttings of either one or two-year-old wood, but they should 

 always be planted ia a moist soil. 



Platanns occldentalis, Linn. — Buttonwood, Sycamore. — ^Leaves 

 large, six to ten inches broad, roundish heart-shaped, but deeply 

 and angularly lobed and toothed, covered when young with 

 dense whitish down, but soon becoming smooth. The pendu- 

 lous fruit about an inch in diameter. One of the largest trees 

 found east of the Rocky Mountains, often from seventy-five to 

 a hundred feet high, with stem ten to fifteen feet in diameter. 

 The stems of large specimens often becoming hollow, only a 

 shell of three or four inches in thickness remaiuing sound. 

 These old hollow trunks were utilized by the early settlers in 

 Western New York, Ohio, and Indiana, for grain bins, smoke- 

 houses, and similar purposes, and then sometimes the pioneer 

 and his famUy found shelter in them, for it was an easy matter 

 to cut down one of the large, hollow trees, and then divide it 

 into sections of the required size with saw or axe. A few 

 slabs or pieces of bark, or slab-Uke sections of the same tree, 

 made a good roof or cover. Wood brownish, cross-grained, 

 cannot be split, and for this reason is in demand for meat- 

 blocks and similar purposes. Decays quickly if exposed to the 

 weather. Common in all of our Northern States, and southward 



