PACIFIC PLANE OR SYCAMORE TREE. 11!) 



One of our charter members of the California Academy 

 of Sciences, the late Col. Ransom, used to relate his own 

 observations while surveying the lands of Ohio, bordering 



the Muskingum. His party taking shelter from a storm in the 

 hollow of one of those eastern Sycamores — found he could 

 twirl his twelve foot measuring-pole horizontally over their 

 heads; into another fallen tree a cow had entered and housed, 

 forty to fifty feet or more towards the light of a large knot- 

 hole, was too stupid to back out, and the hole was enlarged 

 for her exit. Michaux, measured some of these enormous 

 trees, and found them thirty-six to forty-seven feet in circum- 

 ference. 



The Pacific Racemose Sycamore has an altitude of eighty 

 to one hundred feet or more, rarely over six to eight feet in 

 diameter, the spread often equals, if it does not sometimes 

 surpass, the height; towards the south the foliage is magnifi- 

 ciently tropical, it is however, found to vary greatly in size 

 and wooliness. Perhaps there may prove to be tw r o species: 

 P. Lindemian and P. Mexicana come in beyond the south- 

 ern boundary of the State, and P. Wrightiana in Arizona. 

 Although all our forms of P. Racemosa, as at present con- 

 stituted, are loose, the southern one is certainly most open 

 and tends to spread very, widely its divided body; this, in 

 the vicinity of San Diego, its extreme limit is often a smaller 

 tree than at Santa Barbara and those approaching central 

 California; and nearly all of them are closely surrounded 

 by multiplied shoots from the common root, origin of the 

 central parent tree; these trees have a rougher dark brown 

 bark below; it is not known whether they are of equal age, 

 notwithstanding their smaller size. The typical tree when 

 dismantled of those ample palms, and the sparse branches 

 seen so nearly naked, almost bare against the sky, strike one 

 as much more ungainly than oaks in similar condition and 

 even than many other large-leafed trees. 



There is here, as elsewhere, often a sudden blackening and 

 withering of the young Spring leaves, as it were, by frost, 

 but young and vigorous trees escape, or at least the central 

 leading top, showing intrinsic and internal vigor, but peri- 

 pheral weakness of some kind. If not killed outright by 

 this chill (not frost), it is found that season they bear no 

 fruit; this is the mysterious transcontinental "Sycamore 

 blight." The delicate sympathy of the Sycamore for the loss 

 of her sylvan companions is very remarkable; sensitive to 

 sudden shocks, and even slight irregular changes in climatic 

 conditions, especially fitful atmospheric, for it is in a high 

 degree an aerial tree, and requires, as well as helps to main- 

 tain, the gentle seasons that tide the rolling year. When these 

 are no longer unified to give a lengthened rest, like a grad- 

 ual Indian Summer close, into a cool, consistent, well-marked 



