I didn't notice this name until recently - some villages grow these trees all around - so many that you can't ignore. I like maple wood based furniture for its clean/white surface, so much refine that it reflects light so well like mirror!
An American sycamore tree (compounded name for a few sub-species), e.g., sycamore maple, which I's confused with classic maple tree. Platanus occidentalis, also known as American sycamore, American planetree, occidental plane, and buttonwood, is one of the species of Platanus native to North America. It is usually called sycamore in North America, a name which can refer to other types of tree in other parts of the world. 一种美国梧桐树（复数名亚种），例如，美国梧桐枫，我与经典枫树混淆。 悬铃木（又称美国梧桐），美国星球，西方飞机和钮木，是北美原产的悬铃木物种之一。 它在北美通常被称为梧桐，这个名字可以指世界其他地方的其他树种。
An American sycamore tree can often be easily distinguished from other trees by its mottled bark which flakes off in great irregular masses, leaving the surface mottled, and greenish-white, gray and brown. The bark of all trees has to yield to a growing trunk by stretching, splitting, or infilling; the sycamore shows the process more openly than many other trees. The explanation is found in the rigid texture of the bark tissue which lacks the elasticity of the bark of some other trees, so it is incapable of stretching to accommodate the growth of the wood underneath, so the tree sloughs it off. 一棵美国梧桐树通常可以很容易地与其他树木区分开来，它的斑驳的树皮以不规则的大块状脱落，表面呈斑点状，呈绿白色，灰褐色。 所有树木的树皮必须通过伸展，分裂或填充而屈服于成长中的树干; 梧桐树比其他许多树木更能公开地展示这个过程。 树皮组织刚性质地缺乏其它树皮的弹性，因此无法适应下面木材的生长，所以树木就会脱落。((有点像中國脱皮桉树 - 树叶用来蒸馏飞机用油, 脱皮用来为柴火）
** Platanus occidentalis, also known as American sycamore, American planetree, occidental plane, and buttonwood, is one of the species of Platanus native to North America. It is usually called sycamore in North America, a name which can refer to other types of tree in other parts of the world.
In popular culture[edit]
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This article appears to contain trivial, minor, or unrelated references to popular culture. (October 2017)
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Sycamore trees are a common motif in lyrics, poetry, and prose.
Music[edit]
The sycamore tree is mentioned in the song "Dream a Little Dream of Me". "Back Home Again in Indiana", traditionally sung just before the start of the Indianapolis 500 mile auto race, also references the sycamore. "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas includes a reference: "How high does a sycamore grow? If you cut it down, then you'll never know." Singer Lisa Brokop refers to the tree in the song "Rain on the River". Bob Marley also sang of the sycamore tree in his song "Time Will Tell".
Literature[edit]
The sycamore tree is one of the main themes in movie Flipped (2010) where the lead character Juli Baker is greatly attached to the sycamore tree in the neighborhood. In Wilson Rawls' novel Where the Red Fern Grows, Billy Coleman in his first hunt with his redbones (Old Dan and Little Ann) trees a raccoon in a sycamore.
Description[edit] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platanus_occidentalis
An American sycamore tree can often be easily distinguished from other trees by its mottled bark which flakes off in great irregular masses, leaving the surface mottled, and greenish-white, gray and brown. The bark of all trees has to yield to a growing trunk by stretching, splitting, or infilling; the sycamore shows the process more openly than many other trees. The explanation is found in the rigid texture of the bark tissue which lacks the elasticity of the bark of some other trees, so it is incapable of stretching to accommodate the growth of the wood underneath, so the tree sloughs it off.[1]
A sycamore can grow to massive proportions, typically reaching up to 30 to 40 m (98 to 131 ft) high and 1.5 to 2 m (4.9 to 6.6 ft) in diameter when grown in deep soils. The largest of the species have been measured to 51 m (167 ft), and nearly 4 m (13 ft) in diameter. Larger specimens were recorded in historical times. In 1744, a Shenandoah Valley settler named Joseph Hampton and two sons lived for most of the year in a hollow sycamore in what is now Clarke County, Virginia.[2] In 1770, at Point Pleasant, Virginia (now in West Virginia)[3] near the junction of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers, George Washington recorded in his journal a sycamore measuring 13.67 m (44 ft 10 in) in circumference at 91 cm (3 ft) from the ground.[4]
The sycamore tree is often divided near the ground into several secondary trunks, very free from branches. Spreading limbs at the top make an irregular, open head. Roots are fibrous. The trunks of large trees are often hollow.
Another peculiarity is the way the leaves grow sticky, green buds. In early August, most trees in general will have—nestled in the axils of their leaves—the tiny forming bud which will produce the leaves of the coming year. The sycamore branch apparently has no such buds. Instead there is an enlargement of the petiole which encloses the bud in a tight-fitting case at the base of the petiole.[1]
- Bark: Dark reddish brown, broken into oblong plate-like scales; higher on the tree, it is smooth and light gray; separates freely into thin plates which peel off and leave the surface pale yellow, or white, or greenish. Branchlets at first pale green, coated with thick pale tomentum, later dark green and smooth, finally become light gray or light reddish brown.
- Wood: Light brown, tinged with red; heavy, weak, difficult to split. Largely used for furniture and interior finish of houses, butcher's blocks. Specific gravity, 0.5678; relative density, 0.53724 g/cm3 (33.539 lb/cu ft).
- Winter buds: Large, stinky, sticky, green, and three-scaled, they form in summer within the petiole of the full grown leaf. The inner scales enlarge with the growing shake. There is no terminal bud.
- Leaves: Alternate, palmately nerved, broadly ovate or orbicular, 10 to 23 cm (4 to 9 in) inches long, truncate or cordate or wedge-shaped at base, decurrent on the petiole. Three to five-lobed by broad shallow sinuses rounded in the bottom; lobes acuminate, toothed, or entire, or undulate. They come out of the bud plicate, pale green coated with pale tomentum; when full grown are bright yellow green above, paler beneath. In autumn they turn brown and wither before falling. Petioles long, abruptly enlarged at base and inclosing the buds. Stipules with spreading, toothed borders, conspicuous on young shoots, caducous.
- Flowers: May, with the leaves; monoecious, borne in dense heads. Staminate and pistillate heads on separate peduncles. Staminate heads dark red, on axillary peduncles; pistillate heads light green tinged with red, on longer terminal peduncles. Calyx of staminate flowers three to six tiny scale-like sepals, slightly united at the base, half as long as the pointed petals. Of pistillate flowers three to six, usually four, rounded sepals, much shorter than the acute petals. Corolla of three to six thin scale-like petals.
- Stamens: In staminate flowers as many of the divisions of the calyx and opposite to them; filaments short; anthers elongated, two-celled; cells opening by lateral slits; connectives hairy.
- Pistil: Ovary superior, one-celled, sessile, ovate-oblong, surrounded at base by long, jointed, pale hairs; styles long, incurved, red, stigmatic, ovules one or two.
- Fruit: Brown heads, solitary or rarely clustered, 2.5 cm (1 in) in diameter, hanging on slender stems three to six inches long; persistent through the winter. These heads are composed of achenes about two-thirds of an inch in length. October.[1]
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The characteristic bark of an American sycamore
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A sycamore in winter.
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Old sycamores can have massive trunks
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Tree in autumn
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Autumn leaves
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Upper branches of a sycamore
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Sycamore trunk and branches
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American sycamore People also search for Sycamore maple
