Sycamore Tree (Acer pseudo-platanus)

Long ago recognized by the characters of its flowers and fruit, not to mention the arrangement and veining of its leaves, as a Maple, and correctly named accordingly the Great Maple, the remarkable denseness of its foliage, and the grateful shade which it in consequence affords, caused it to be confused in Western Europe, at an early period, with the true Sycamore, or Fig Mulberry (Ficus Sycamorus) of scripture, a confusion which it is stated is still retained in the language of flowers, according to which mystic code of symbolism this tree signifies "curiosity," because it is identified with that on which Zaccheus climbed that he might see Christ at His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. This confusion is said to have led to a considerable planting of this species by religious persons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Similarly in Scotland it is still commonly known as the Plane, a confusion commemorated by Linnaeus in the specific name pseudo-platanus, and in the French "fausse Platane." The only resemblance, however, between the Sycamore and the Plane lies, as we have seen when considering the latter species, in the form of the leaves, which, between certain other species of the Maple group and some varieties of the Plane, does indeed amount almost to an identity of outline and of venation. The leaves of the Plane, however, are not in opposite pairs; their lobes are commonly more pointed than those of the Sycamore, and their surface is more glossy, and of a brighter, more yellow shade of green; whilst the globular monoecious catkins and bur-like fruit-clusters of the former are altogether unlike the racemes of greenish flowers, followed by bunches of winged fruits, or "keys," in the tree which we are now considering.

The Sycamore is essentially a native of Central Europe, occurring most abundantly in wooded, mountainous situations in Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland, in which last-mentioned country it ascends on dry soils to an altitude of nearly 3,000 feet above sea-level, suffering but little from frost or snow. It will grow in any soil not saturated with moisture, but prefers dry and well-drained ground to stiff clay or loam. It will grow in exposed situations even on the sea coast; and, owing to the stiff, angular mode of growth of its branches giving it an exceptionally strong "spray," as it is technically termed, few trees are better adapted to act as a shelter from the winds in such spots. Even when the winds blow strongly in one direction for nine months out of the twelve, the Sycamore will retain its symmetrical outline, its head not leaning more to one side than another.

It is a tree of rapid growth, reaching a good height in a short time. Trees ten years old are recorded as reaching twenty-five or twenty-eight feet in height, whilst the species reaches its full growth of from fifty to sixty feet at an age of as many years. The tree requires, however, to be eighty or a hundred years old before its timber arrives at perfection, and the ordinary longevity of the species is stated at from 140 to 200 years, though several cases of greater age are on record. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, for instance, in his edition of Gilpin's "Forest Scenery," mentions a remarkable Sycamore, supposed to be not less than 300 years old, at Calder House, which, in 1799, had a girth of trunk of over twenty feet, and a spread of branches of sixty feet. It was the tree to which in former times the iron jugs, a kind of pillory, were fastened; but this instrument of torture had, in 1834, long been grown over by the annual increment of wood, and deeply imbedded in a protuberance on one side of the massive bole. Another specimen at Friburg, in Switzerland, over twenty-six feet in girth, is supposed to be 500 years old. A magnificent specimen at Studley, of unknown age, is figured in Loudon's "Arboretum." It is 100 feet high, over eight feet in diameter, and over ninety feet in the spread of its branches.

Though the foliage is undoubtedly dull in color, and wanting in variety of light and shade, the tree, as a whole, has, when well grown, considerable beauty of outline. Its smooth-barked cylindrical stem rises generally but a few feet from the ground before sending out nearly horizontal branches, the lower of which may form large limbs, reaching, as we have seen, to a considerable distance from the trunk. The branches lessen regularly towards the top of the tree, so that standing alone in a park the Sycamore presents a regular, rounded crown. The bark and leaf-stalks of the young shoots are often of a clear blood-red tint, which in early spring is well contrasted with the delicate green of the spreading fans of foliage; for, like many leaves in which the veins are arranged "palmately," i.e., radiating like the fingers of the hand, "the broad leaves of the Sycamore" are folded in the bud like the feuille of a fan, or, as botanists term it, in a "plicate" manner. These leaves are from four to eight inches across, grayish on their under surfaces, and divided into five pointed lobes, with a margin toothed with rounded serratures. The principal veins are prominent on the lower surface of the leaf; and in autumn, either before or after they have fallen, the leaves are very commonly blotched over, as if with large blots of ink, owing to the attacks of a parasitic fungus, known as Rhytisma, or Xyloma, acerinum. It also attacks other Maples, and is decidedly unsightly.

In May or June the Sycamore bears long pendulous racemes of small green flowers, each having generally six or eight sepals, and as many petals and stamens, the two latter whorls inserted on the edge of a ring-shaped, fleshy disc, on which rises the ovary. This latter is hairy, and has two curved stigmas, whilst it further foreshadows the form of the fruit in two humps like those on the shoulders in a fashionable lady's mantle. As in other trees of the Maple group, the first-formed flowers of the raceme--which, though structurally lower, are, from the pendulous position of the cluster, actually uppermost--are male, i.e., have no pistil; whilst those subsequently developed, as the flowering branch gains in strength, diameter, and food-supply, are "hermaphrodite," i.e., have both stamens and pistil. Hence the number of fruits hanging in an autumnal cluster is far smaller than the number of the summer's blossoms. This is an interesting illustration of what is apparently a general law of sex among flowering plants, viz., that less nutrition is required for staminate than for pistillate, or hermaphrodite, flowers. When two or three kinds of flowers--hermaphrodite, and staminate, or pistillate, or all three--occur in one inflorescence, it is called "polygamous," as is the case not only in most Maples, but also in the allied Horse-chestnut, in the upright clusters of which tree, however, it is the last formed, upper flowers that are male. In summer's heat, "the cool shade of a Sycamore" afforded by the close overlapping of the broad leaves, is truly grateful, and one regrets to see in them the early symptoms of coming autumn, when the tree appears, as Cowper says,

"capricious in attire:
Now green, now tawny, and ere autumn yet
Has chang'd the woods, in scarlet honours bright."

Then, too, not only the leaves, but also the twin scimitars of the fruit, are tinged with red. A simple two-veined parachute, adapted to fall, a little later on, in screw-like whirlings in the autumn gales, so as to carry the seed away from the fatal shelter of its parent tree, the curved outline of this fruit, known to the botanist as a "double samara," is well worth the attentive study of the artis. Its inner edges follow, in fact, that celebrated "line of beauty" upon which Hogarth so strongly insisted.

For its regular form and its summer shade the Sycamore more may be well planted in the park, or to form a quick-growing screen; and from its rapid but rigid growth better adapted to act as a "nurse" to young Oaks other valuable timber-trees than are some other species because it will not lash the young leaders when blown by wind. The leaves, however, are so infested with honey dew" as to render the Sycamore somewhat unsuitable the lawn. Like that of all the Maple tribe, its sap is rich in sugar, which has in fact been fermented into a wine; and this sugary sap is excreted not only as honey in the flowers, but also from the leaves where punctured by an aphis, and is then known as honey-dew."

Sir Thomas Dick Lauder truly observes that " the spring tints of the Sycamore are rich, tender, glowing and harmonious; in summer its deep green hue accords well with its grand and massive form, and the brown and dingy reds of its autumnal tints harmonies well with the mixed grove, to which they give a fine depth od tone". To this panegyric, Mr. Selby, the author of the beautiful "History of British Forest Trees," adds: "The color of the bark is also agreeable to the eye, being of a time ash gray, frequently broken into patches of different hues, by the peeling off, in old trees, of large flakes of the outer bark in the manner of the Plane. . . . Vying in point of magnitude with the Oak, the Ash, and other tree of the first rank, it presents a grand, unbroken mass of foliage, contrasting well, in appropriate situations, and when judiciously grouped, with trees of a lighter and more airy character, and affording, as Gilpin expresses an impenetrable shade.'" It must be admitted, however, that the diversifying of the bark with lighter patches here alluded to is not nearly so uniformly characteristic of the Sycamore as of the Plane; so that, though a type of sturdy self-reliance in its massive form, the former species cannot, on the score of coloring, be acquitted of the charge of monotony.

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