no 
WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES. 
not shed its bark in small flakes like the Oriental Plane, but in 
large sheets. 
Planes normally rise to a height of something between seventy 
and ninety feet, and the trunk attains a circumference of from 
nine to twelve feet ; but there is a record of a portly Plane whose 
waist measurement was forty feet ! Many persons imagine 
because the leaves of the Plane resemble those of the Syca- 
more that the two are closely related ; but this is not so, and 
a comparison of the flowers and fruit will show that they 
are not. The catkins of the Plane take the form of balls, 
in which male or female flowers are pressed together ; and 
the fruits, instead of being winged samaras, are the rough 
balls that so closely resemble an old-fashioned form of button, 
that the tree is known in some parts of the United States as 
the Button-wood. (It is also known there as Sycamore and 
Cotton-tree.) 
The Plane is supposed to have got its name Platatius from 
the Greek word plains (broad), in double allusion to the broad 
leaves and the ample shadow which the tree throws. These 
leaves are five-lobed, and, as already indicated, those of the 
Oriental species are much more deeply cut. Further distinction 
is found in the colour of the petiole or leaf-stalk, which is green 
in P. orientalis, and purplish-red in P. occidentalism and in the 
larger and smoother seed-buttons of the latter. Instead of the 
leaves being attached to the stem in pairs, as we saw in 
the Sycamore, those of the Plane are alternate — that is to say, 
leaf number two of a series will be halfway between one and 
three, but on the opposite side of the shoot. 
The outline of the tree is not so regular as in most others, 
the leaves being gathered in heavy masses, with broad spaces 
between, rather than equally distributed over the head. This 
is, of course, due to the freedom with which the crooked arms 
are flung about. The pale-brown wood is flne-grained, tough, 
and hard, and is extensively used by pianoforte-makers, coach- 
