THE WESTERN PLANE TREE 



Government of Ceylon. From a plank sent to the Indian and 

 Colonial Exhibition. 



No. 181. THE WESTERN PLANE TREE. Platanus 



occidentalis. Linn, (not Hook). 



Plate XIII. Fig. 114. 



Natural Order. Platanaceae. 



Alternative Names. Button-wood : Button-ball (49). Butter- 

 wood, Plane, American Plane. Plataan (51) at the Cape of 

 Good Hope. Californian Button-wood (12). 



Sources of Supply. Southern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. 



Physical Characters, etc. Recorded dry-weight 28-41 lbs. per 

 cu. ft. Hardness Grade 6, compare Beech. Smell or taste none 

 when dry. Burns well : embers glow in still air. Solution with 

 water brownish. 



Grain. Compact, open and fine. Surface of the ground 

 rather dull : of the rays, lustrous. 



Bark. " Greenish : deciduous in large flakes, leaving the 

 newly-exposed bark a whitish or greyish mottled colour. On the 

 upper branches it is smooth and has a whitewashed appearance " 



(49)- 



Uses, etc. " Cabinet-making, fruit-baskets, tobacco-boxes, etc. : 

 quay timbers" (49). "A clean wood, rather disposed to brittle- 

 ness . . . furniture, screws, blocks " (95). " The largest tree of 

 the Atlantic forests . . . not strong, difficult to split and 

 work . . . ox-yokes, butchers' blocks, and (rarely) for cheap 

 furniture : a tree 100-130 ft. high by 80-140 inches in diameter " 

 (100). A wood of great beauty when quartered. Plane-tree 

 wood, both Eastern and. Western, may easily be confused with 

 Honeysuckle (Knightia, No. 161) and Cape Beech (Myrsine, 

 No. 128). 



Authorities. Hough (49), pt. i. p. 59. Wiesner (131), L. 1, 

 p. 78. Stevenson (113), p. 140. Laslett (60), p. 184. Du Mor- 

 nay (70), p. 69. Holtzapffel (48), p. 101. Mathieu (69), p. 435. 

 Robb (95). Sargent (100), No. 235. 



Colour. Heart-wood of irregular contour, brownish, not 

 sharply defined from the brownish-yellow sap-wood. 



Anatomical Characters. Transverse section : — 



Pores. Need lens, size 5, somewhat variable : uniformly 

 crowded throughout the ring, often almost monopolizing the 

 space : smaller in the dense, late Autumn wood, but not so 

 crowded : 150-200 per sq. mm. : not subdivided, but sometimes 

 as many as 10 in a compact group. 



Rays. Conspicuous, size 3, rather broad : few 1-2 per mm. 

 long, tapering very much both ends, clearly spindle-shaped : 



207 



