Celebrating the Sycamore.

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.

HOME CARE

Sycamores tolerate a variety of soil types, as long as the soil is moist and reasonably well drained. They are not particularly drought-tolerant, and in nature they are found most often in bottomlands and along rivers and streams. They do fine in neutral or even somewhat alkaline soil (pH 6.6 to 8.0).

As long as they have enough moisture for their roots, sycamores can tolerate dry air, pollution, and compacted soil, making them a popular choice for the city. They prefer full sun but will accept light shade.

In the fall for the first three to four years after planting, sycamores benefit from some slow-acting granular fertilizers formulated for woody plants. After that time they can take care of themselves.

They do not require routine pruning, but they occasionally need special pruning to establish a single central stem, or leader, when they are young. They also benefit from periodic trimming in their formative years. Sycamores respond so well to even hard pruning that people often train them as hedges or shape them to make allees.

PESTS

Sycamores and planetrees tend to be tough trees with few major pest problems, except for the aforementioned anthracnose. Trees enjoying good air circulation--free from crowding by other large trees--tend to be less vulnerable to this disease. Other occasional problems include:

Symptom: Leaves turn pale, mottled; drop early

Probable Cause: Lacebug

Symptom: Trunks and limbs scarred, weakened; twig drop

Probable Cause: Borers

Symptom: Bumps on leaves and branches; stunted growth 

Probable Cause: Scale

Symptom: Fewer, smaller leaves; blue-black stains on bark

Probable Cause: Cankerstain

Symptom: Stained bark

Probable Cause: Dog urine

Our yard has a mature sycamore growing at a rather steep angle toward the house with much of its main foliage directly above the roof. Years ago, when my wife Liz became a bit antsy about the tree falling on the house, we had a certified arborist check it out.

He just laughed, saying our brick house would probably blow over before a windstorm caused the tree to fall over. Thank goodness for sycamores' deep and strong root systems.

Jeff Ball appears on NBC'S Today Show as a gardening expert and writes articles and books about gardening.

THE NATIONAL CHAMP

Species: American sycamore (Platunus occidentallis)

Location: Bath, Virginia

Circumference at 4.5 feet: 334 in.

Height: 95 feet

Crown spread: 105 feet

Total points: 455

Nominator: Kirk Lunsford

The National Register of Big Trees is sponsored by The Davey Tree. Expert Company.

WITNESS TREES FROM BERKELEY PLANTATION AND THE MOON

Have you ever walked beneath the whispering boughs of a towering tree and wondered at the history it has seen? If trees could talk, they would tell of chance encounters that changed lives, log cabins where settlers grew families, fiery speeches that changed minds, and savage battles that ended young lives.

Few trees have seen as much history as a sycamore at Virginia's Berkeley Hundred Plantation. The plantation has been called the ancestral home of all Americans after 38 travel-weary English fell on their knees in prayers of Thanksgiving there December 4, 1619, nearly a year before the Pilgrims reached Plymouth. The first bourbon was distilled at Berkeley in 1621, only months before the small colony was wiped out in an Indian massacre in 1622.

The plantation was bought by the Harrison family in 1691; in 1726, Benjamin Harrison IV built America's first three-story house there, a fine example of Georgian architecture. His son, Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born there, as was his son, William Henry Harrison. Known as Old Tippecanoe after his legendary battle with Chief Tecumseh, William Henry Harrison became the ninth president of the United States in 1841. He is remembered chiefly for catching pneumonia during his lengthy inaugural address and, a month later, becoming the first president to die in office.

No one knows for sure the age of the Berkeley Plantation Sycamore, but it was already full grown in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln stood beneath its boughs to review and encourage the Army of the Potomac.

A Mississippi sycamore has a remarkable lineage of a different sort. On January 31, 1971, the United States launched. Apollo 14 to complete its third lunar landing. Aboard, with Edgar Mitchell and Alan Shepard Jr. was Stuart Allen Roosa, also known as "Smokey" for his background as a U.S. Forest Service smokejumper (firefighters who jump from planes into forests to battle raging fires).

As an astronaut Stuart never lost his appreciation for forests or his love for trees, and with him on this mission to circle the moon be packets of tree seeds. After Apollo 14 landed, a Forest Service scientist germinated the seeds at NASA's manned space center at Houston. In 1975 a moon seedling was planted in front of the University of Mississippi's Forestry Science Building. It is now a mighty tree.

Stuart and I were phone buddies, chatting on several occasions about his love for trees. We planned a tree-planting tour in spring 1995 to help schoolchildren plant their own moon sycamores. Sadly, he died the day after Christmas 1994. Before his death Stuart expressed hope that descendants of the moon sycamore could encourage Americans to dream as big as the moon while planting trees to improve the quality of life here on earth.

Descendants of both sycamores are available from AMERICAN FORESTS' Famous & Historic Trees program. Other "witness" sycamores are available as well. To learn more about those trees or for more information, call 800/320-TREE or visit our website at www.americanforests.org.

--Jeff Meyer, director, AMERICAN FORESTS' Famous & Historic Trees project