SYCAMORE
(Platanus Occidentalis)
Probably no person with a practical knowledge of trees ever mistakes sycamore for anything else. The tree stands clear-cut and distinct. Until the trunk becomes old, it sheds its outer layer of bark yearly, or at least frequently, and the exfoliation exposes the white, new bark below. The upper part of the trunk and the large branches are white and conspicuous in the spring, and are recognizable at a long distance. No other tree in the American forest is as white. The nearest approach to it is the paper birch of the North, or the white birch of New England.
Notwithstanding the tree’s individuality, it has a good many names. It is generally known as sycamore throughout the states of the Union, but it is frequently called buttonwood in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Ontario; buttonball tree in several of the eastern states and occasionally in Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, and Nebraska; the plane tree in Rhode Island, Delaware, South Carolina, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa; the water beech in Delaware; the platane, cottonier, and bois puant in Louisiana. Probably the finest growth of the sycamore ever encountered was in Ohio and Indiana, and these states still contain isolated patches of magnificent specimens of the wood. The Black Swamp of Ohio was originally a famous sycamore country, of which Defiance was the center of lumber manufacture. Many parts of Indiana produced a good sycamore growth, and a considerable amount of timber of excellent quality still exists, but is now largely owned by farmers who are generally holding it out of the market.
The range of sycamore extends from Maine to Nebraska, and south to Texas and Florida. It is one of the largest of American hardwoods, and in diameter of trunk it is exceeded by none. Trees are on record that were from ten to fourteen feet in diameter, and it was not unusual in the primeval forests for them to tower nearly or quite 125. In height a number of hardwoods exceed it, the yellow poplar in particular; but none of them has a larger trunk than the largest sycamores. However, the mammoths are generally hollow. The heart decays as rings of new growth are added to the outside of the shell. So large were the cavities in some of the sycamores in the original forests that more than one case is on record of their being used by early settlers as places of abode.
The tree thrives best in the immediate vicinity of rivers and creeks. It needs abundance of water for its roots, but is not insistent in its demand for deep, fertile soil, for it grows on gravel bars along water courses, provided some soil and sand are mixed with the gravel. Great age is doubtless attained, but records are necessarily lacking in cases where the annual rings of growth must be depended upon; because the hollow trunks have lost most of their rings by decay.
Sycamore bears abundance of light seed which is scattered short distances by wind and much farther by running water. Its ideal place for germinating is on muddy shores and wet flats. Here the seeds are deposited by wind and water, and in a short time multitudes of seedlings spring up. Though most of them are doomed to perish before they attain a height of a few feet, survivors are sufficient to assure thick stands on small areas. The trunks grow tall rapidly, and until they reach considerable size, they remain solid and make good sawlogs; but at an age of seventy-five or 100 years, deterioration is apt to set in; some die, others become hollow, and the result is a good stand of large sycamores is unusual. The veterans are generally scattered through forests of other species.
The statement has often been made in recent years that sycamore is becoming very scarce and that the annual output is rapidly declining. Statistics do not show a declining output. The cut of sycamore in 1909 was approximately twice as great as in 1899. It is true that the supply is not very large, and it never was large compared with some other hardwoods; but it appears to be holding its own as well as most forest trees. The cut in the United States in 1910 was 45,000,000, and it was credited to twenty-six states. Indiana was the largest contributor, and it had held that position a long time. States next below it in the order named were Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois. Doubtless some of the sycamore lumber now going to market has grown since old settlers cut the primeval stands when they cleared their fields. It will continue to grow, and since it usually occupies waste places, it may be depended upon to contribute pretty regularly year by year during time to come. It is one of the forest trees which have never suffered much from fires, because it grows in damp situations.
The wood of sycamore weighs 35.39 pounds per cubic foot, is hard, but not strong, difficult to split and work; the annual rings are limited by narrow bands of dark summerwood. The rings are very porous. The medullary rays are rather small, but can be easily seen without a glass. They run in regular, radial lines, close together, and the pores are in rows between. The rays of sycamore vary from the rule with most woods, in that they are darker than the body of the wood.
One of the earliest uses of sycamore was by farmers who cut hollow trunks, sawed them in lengths of three or four feet, nailed bottoms in them, and used them for barrels for grain. They were called gums. Solid logs two or three feet in diameter were cut in lengths of a foot or less, bored through the center, and used as wheels for ox carts. The ox yoke was often made of sycamore. Butchers used sycamore sections about three feet high for meat blocks. The wood is tough, and continual hacking fails to split it. The use for meat blocks continues at the present time. In Illinois 1,600,000 feet were so employed in 1910.
One of the earliest employments of the wood for commercial purposes was in the manufacture of boxes for plug tobacco; but it has now been largely replaced by cheaper woods. Its freedom from stain and odor is its chief recommendation for tobacco boxes. Some of it is in demand for cigar boxes.
The modern uses of sycamore are many. It is made into ordinary crates and shipping boxes in most regions where it grows. Rotary cut veneer is worked into berry crates and baskets, and into barrels. Ice boxes and refrigerators are among the products. Slack coopers are among the largest users, but some of the manufactured stave articles belong more properly to woodenware, such as tubs, washing machines, candy buckets, and lard pails.
Furniture makers demand the best grades, and most of the quarter-sawed stock goes to them, though the manufacturers of musical instruments buy some of the finest. Use is pretty general from pipe organs and pianos down to mandolins, guitars and phonographs. It enters extensively into the making of miscellaneous commodities. As small a toy as the stereoscope consumes much sycamore. Makers of trunks find it suitable for slats, and it serves as small squares and borders in parquetry. It is a choice wood for barber poles and saddle trees, and its fine appearance when worked in broad panels leads to its employment as interior finish for houses, boats, and passenger cars.
California Sycamore (Platanus racemosa) is one of the three species of sycamore now found growing naturally in the United States. They are survivors of a very old family and appear to have been crowded down from the far North by the cold, or to have made their way south for some other reason. Sycamores flourished in Greenland in the Cretaceous age, some millions of years ago, as is shown by fossil remains dug up in that land of ice and eternal winter. They grew in central Europe, about the same time, but long ago disappeared from there. Sycamores were growing in the United States an immense period of time ago, and were doubtless lifting their giant white branches high above the banks of ancient rivers while the gorgeous bloom of yellow poplars brightened the forests on the rich bottom lands farther back. Several species of sycamores which grew in the United States during the Tertiary age are now extinct. All seem to have been much like those which have come down to the present day.
The California sycamore is found in the southern half of that state, and in Lower California. It grows from sea level up to 5,000 feet, and has the same habits as the larger sycamore of the East, and prefers the banks of streams and the wet land in the bottoms of canyons. It attains a height of from forty to eighty feet, and a diameter of from two to five. Some trees are larger, one in particular near Los Angeles having a trunk diameter of nine feet. The tree is usually extremely distorted and misshaped, leaning, twisted, and forking and reforking until a practical lumberman would pronounce it a hopeless proposition. This applies, however, to trunks which grow in the open, and that is where most of them grow. When they are found crowded in thick stands in the bottoms of canyons, their trunks are shapely enough for short sawlogs. The wood is very similar to that of eastern sycamore, and it is used for similar purposes, when used at all. The balls are strung five on one tough stem, which is from six to ten inches long. The eastern sycamore usually has a stem for each ball. The seeding habits of both trees are the same.
Arizona Sycamore (Platanus wrightii) has its range in southern New Mexico, southern Arizona, and neighboring regions in Mexico, where it grows in the bottoms of canyons up to 6,000 feet above sea. The tree attains a height of from thirty to eighty feet, and a diameter of two to five. The trunk is seldom shapely, but often divides in large branches, some of which are fifty or sixty feet long. There are usually three balls on a stem, and the leaf is shaped much like the leaf of red gum, but there is considerable variation in form. The wood resembles eastern sycamore in color and most other features, but when quarter-sawed the flecks produced by the medullary rays are generally smaller, and give a mottled effect. The wood has not been much used, but apparently it is not inferior to eastern sycamore.
Sycamore branch
