Have you ever looked out of a car window at the sycamores and white birches that streak the dull winter woods with light? It is a strange sight, calculated to stir the dullest imagination. The birches stand together, and keep each other in countenance. They do not seem to mind being looked at, but flaunt their tattered ribbons of bark without self-consciousness. The sycamores stand alone, as a rule. Except in young trees, the limbs are tortuous, reaching out in many directions without much regard for sym metry. One often stands on the verge of a stream, and leans far out as if contemplating a plunge. The rush of the train makes of these solitary trees pallid, spectral figures, that dart past the win dows—hunted outcasts, lepers in the tree community, fleeing before invisible pursuers. It is a satisfaction to find each tree back in its place when we come again that way.
Quite a different tree from the distressed-looking specimen in colder New England is the buttonwood of more congenial soil and clime—a stalwart, large-limbed tree of colossal trunk, which lifts its head high above its forest neighbours, and shelters great oaks and maples under its protecting arms. The weird, irregular top is singularly free from small branches, but in summer the broad leaves are so disposed as to soften the harsh lines. The open-boughed buttonwoods of the little city of Worcester, Massa chusetts, noted for their stately beauty early in the century just finished, well illustrate this kindly ministry of the leaves.
The buds of the sycamore deserve our close attention in the autumn. Leaves are fading; at first glance we note that there are no buds in their angles. How is next year's growth provided for? Look again! The leaf loosens in your hand and lets go its hold on the twig. Its stem ends in a hollow cone. There on the twig is a plump bud that grew all summer under the protecting base of that leaf. Two or three little hoods each bud wears to protect it, now the leaf is gone. The outer one is of leathery texture, without seams, and the delicate inner ones fit dose, so there is no danger. The leaf never abandons its ward until it is safe to do so.
The little frilled sheathing stipules are well worth looking for on young shoots of the sycamore in spring. So are the balls that hang in the treetop, first in May as the two separate kinds of flower heads; later when the surviving pistillate ones change to hard brown seed balls, banging against neighbouring limbs until the flexible stems are worn to shreds, and the pointed seeds are loosened and wafted away on their hairy parachutes. Most of the
seeds die, of course, but Nature sees to it that here and there a sycamore seed falls on good ground; and a young sapling lifts its broad palms next year above the spot.
Some people object to sycamores because the leaves as they unfold cast off their fuzzy covering of branched hairs, which are irritating to the mucous membrane of the eyes and throat. Most of us have never heard of this trouble before, and have lived com fortably in the neighbourhood of sycamore trees for years. Hap pily, this moulting period of the leaves is very brief. A more serious obstacle to the planting of these trees is their susceptibility to a fungous disease. The young leaves often look scorched imme diately upon opening. A second crop of inferior size and vigour may replace them. Examine an affected leaf, and you find black specks along the veins. These are the outward signs of inward trouble, which is too deep-seated to be reached by any fungicidal spray. Let us hope that time will show a cure, for the sycamore is one of the trees that grows rapidly and flourishes amid the dust and smoke of city streets. How few kinds of trees there are, after all, that stand by to shelter and encourage city-bound humanity through the hot summer days, making fresh green oases in burning brick-and-mortar deserts! The California Sycamore (P.racemosa, Nutt.) bears its but ton balls in a series of four to six strung on the tough, fibrous stem. The leaves have the same general outline as those of its Eastern relative, but the lobes are slenderly triangular, and deeply cleft by sinuses of about the same size and shape. This beautiful Western tree was long confused with P. occidentalis, for its bark is white, and in habit and size the two are similar. A comparison of the leaf and the fruit easily enables one to dis tinguish them.
The Arizona Sycamore (P. Wrightii, Wats.) is a sycamore which looks like P. racernosa in fruit and leaf, but the lobes of the latter are much more finger-like, and measure often 8 to io inches in length. These trees are strikingly beautiful objects, growing to large size on canon sides and stream borders, rising far above the evergreen oaks and pines of the semi-arid regions, each tree a refreshing dash of verdure in a weary land.