DECIDUOUS ORNAMENTAL TREES. 
137 
wisdom and eloquence of those classic days. The Eastern 
plane, {Plat anus orient alls,) was first brought to the Roman 
provinces from Persia, and so highly was it esteemed, that? 
according to Pliny, the Morini paid a tribute to Rome for the 
privilege of enjoying its shade. To that author we are also 
indebted for the history of the great plane tree that grew 
in the province of Lycia, which was of so huge a size, that 
the governor of the province, Licinius Mutianus, together 
with eighteen of his retinue, feasted in the hollow of its 
trunk. 
In the United States, the plane is not generally found 
growing in great quantities in any one place, but is more or 
less scattered over the whole country. In deep, moist, allu- 
vial soils, it attains a size, scarcely, if at all, inferior to that of 
the huge trees of the eastern continent ; forming at least, in 
the body of its trunk, a larger circumference than any other 
of our native trees. The younger Michaux {Sylva : ) 1, 325,) 
measured a tree near Marietta, Ohio, which at four feet 
from the ground was found to be forty-seven feet in cir- 
cumference ; and a specimen has lately been cut on the 
banks of the Genesee river, of such enormous size, that a 
section of the trunk was hollowed out, and furnished as a 
small room, capable of containing fourteen persons.* On the 
margins of the great western rivers, it sometimes rises up 
seventy feet, and then expands into a fine, lofty head, surpas- 
sing in grandeur all its neighbours of the forest. The large 
branches of the plane shoot out in a horizontal direction ; the 
trunk generally ascending in a regular, stately, and uninter- 
rupted manner. The blossoms are small greenish balls ap- 
* A buttonwood on the Montezuma estate, Jefferson, Cayuga Co., N. is forty- 
seven and a half feet in circumference ; and the diameter of the hollow two 
feet from the ground, is fifteen feet. (N. Y. Med. Repository, IV. 427.) 
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