34 
TREES AS GOOD CITIZENS 
The bark on the trunk resembles that of the Ash, and is 
light brownish-grey, with narrow, shallow furrows. The 
young twigs are a light olive green. 
The Sycamore is a large, handsome American tree. 
Its European relatives are called plane trees. The name 
Sycamore is used in Europe for the Sycamore Maple or 
False Plane Tree, while in the Orient and among the 
ancients it was a kind of Fig. The Sycamore is also called 
Buttonwood, Buttonball or Button Ball tree, Plane tree 
and American Plane. It has large maple-shaped leaves 
but has balls instead of keys as the seed vessel; the leaves 
of the Sycamore are not borne opposite one another, being 
thus in contrast to the habit of the Maple. Furthermore 
its bark peels off in thin, brittle layers, a characteristic 
lacking in the Maples except to a very small extent in the 
Sycamore Maple. The peeling process leaves almost white 
patches on the dull, ruddy brown bark, giving a character¬ 
istic mottled effect which can be recognized at a long 
distance. This appearance is not even suggested in the 
Sycamore Maple. Another characteristic peculiar to this 
tree is that the base of the leafstalk makes a cap-like cover¬ 
ing over the young buds and the bud is not seen in the axil 
of the leaf as in nearly all other trees. The leaves are light 
green, five-lobed, and with a few coarse teeth. The fruit is 
in the form of a single ball, rarely two, known as the but¬ 
tonball, which changes from green to light brown in the au¬ 
tumn and hangs throughout the winter. The London 
Plane, often cultivated as the Oriental Plane—a sister tree 
to the Sycamore—sheds its bark as does the Sycamore but 
leaves pale greenish patches beneath, instead of almost 
white ones. Instead of the single ball the fruit of this 
tree is generally borne in clusters of from two to four. 
In the American Elm, the trunk divides gradually a 
short distance from the ground into two or more stout 
