Celebrating the Sycamore - tree

American Forests, Spring, 2000 by Jeff Ball

Popular and distinctive for their multicolored, patchwork bark, sycamores--and their relatives, the planetrees--are widely used as shade trees in residential yards and public settings in many areas of the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia Minor, and China.

It is the regularly peeling bark that gives these rapid-growing shade trees their beauty. Sycamores are also easily identified by the fuzzy ball-like fruits that hang from their branches. Deciduous trees, they drop their large leaves every fail.

The wood is heavy, hard, tough, and coarse. Anyone trying to split sycamore slabs for firewood using a wedge and maul, as I have, is likely to add a few unprintable words to his or her vocabulary. Leave the splitting to hydraulic machines, and instead admire the wood's beauty in butcher blocks, flooring, and even fine furniture.

In pioneer times, sycamore's toughness made it a favorite for wheels to pull ox carts and for barber poles and wooden washing machines. It rolled along the rails as panels for Pullman cars and slats for Saratoga trunks; it built stereoscopes that helped people see faraway places; and it brought music home in piano and organ cases and phonograph boxes.

The American sycamore, also called button-wood, is native to the eastern part of our country. The Philadelphia area boasts some sycamores that date from William Penn's arrival there.

WIDE OPEN SPACES

Sycamores grow rapidly and can sometimes reach 70 feet in their first 20 years. At maturity they will likely reach 110 feet or more, and their huge, angled branches spread as wide or even wider than their height. Trunks can reach from 6 to 10 feet across. Obviously this tree is too big for a small yard, but sycamores make a spectacular specimen in a spacious one. They're also too large to squeeze between a sidewalk and curb. In early colonial days, it was said, settlers used hollowed-out monster sycamores to stable livestock.

The large, coarse leaves resemble maple leaves in shape, with three to five sharply pointed lobes measuring up to 10 or 12 inches long and 6 or 8 inches across. The surface is a smooth, dull medium green; the paler underside has hairy veins. Sycamore leaves emerge in late spring and most drop in November, although a few may persist until very late winter. Their fall color is not too showy.

After about 10 years sycamores and planetrees begin to shed their bark in large patches, creating mottled trunks of cream, tan, and olive green--a sort of calico bark. Fallen bark and leaf litter from one mature sycamore can provide plenty of chopped leaf mulch each fall.

Sycamore flowers emerge in late May or early June, about the same time leaves appear. They form round clusters about 1 inch in diameter. Both the male and female flowers are yellowish green and inconspicuous. Female clusters develop over the season into pale brown, fuzzy seed balls, prompting the popular name "buttonwood." The seed balls dangle on the branches through the fall and much of the winter before beginning to shed seeds in spring. Windborne hairs released when the seed balls fall apart may cause mild nasal irritation to those with tree allergies.

ANIMAL LOVERS

Purple finches love sycamores for their seeds, and so do squirrels and foxes. As the trees grow old and large, they develop deep cavities where large limbs were pruned or have dropped off. These cozy holes shelter generations of squirrels, bats, and the occasional hive of wild honeybees. Sycamores naturally grow in river bottoms, and beavers use the young trees for dams and houses.

CHOICES, CHOICES

There are three kinds of sycamores in the United States: the native American sycamore (of which there are three species: American, California, and Arizona); the smaller Oriental; and the London planetree, a durable hybrid recognized in the early 1700s when the American and Oriental trees genetically crossed in Europe. Widely planted in England, the London planetree survived equally well in the country's damp climate and in the smoky urban conditions of cities like London.

Adopted by U.S. nurserymen as a good choice for cities, the planetree was widely planted in the East and vigorously propagated by the nursery trade. It was often a better choice for urban areas because it could handle poor air quality, grew to a smaller size, and so did not require as large a growing area. Also, it did not suffer from anthracnose, a leaf and twig disease that damages sycamores during damp spring conditions.

The original cross of the American and Oriental sycamores was more luck than science. Its genetic makeup was cloudy until the National Arboretum's Frank Santamour investigated the tree's genetic fiber and scientifically re-created the original accidental cross.

Today, the popular variety "bloodgood" resembles the original American-Oriental cross--and again is a particularly good choice for urban spaces. Somewhat smaller than the American sycamore, bloodgood has slightly smaller leaves and a more greenish tinge overall. It bears its fuzzy fruitballs in distinctive pairs from a common stalk. Bloodgood is one of very few tree species that will survive in selected locations within all 50 states. Columbia or Liberty London planetree varieties also are good options for the home landscape.