Description
American sycamore (Platanus Occidentalis) is mainly a river bottom tree in most of its range. Here in Michigan I have them growing on high and dry soils and they do quite well.
The leaves of the American sycamore are alternate, simple leaves that are 5-9″ long with 3 to 5 lobes with many teeth. They look similar to a sugar maple leaf. The leaves are broader than long, nearly hairless, pale green beneath, the veins are fuzzy, and the stem is short. The sycamore leaves turn orange-brown and yellow in the fall. The sycamore flowers April-June.
The stamin of the flower is red and the pistillate is green with red stigmas. The fruit of this tree is small balls on long stems, full of pointed seeds which are carried by the wind. Sycamore seed can hang on the tree through the winter. The buds are short, 1/4-3/8″ long stout, covered by a single scale and covered by the leaf in the summer. There is no terminal bud.
The bark is one of the outstanding features of the American sycamore. It is distinctive brown bark with mottled areas of light green, flaky, as the bark falls off in irregular plates it exposes a whiteish to yellow under bark. The twigs are pale green.
The wood is heavy, 35 pounds per cubic foot, hard, tough, somewhat weak, difficult to split, difficult to work with, warps badly as lumber, takes polishing well, coarse grained, light brown with darker sapwood. This wood is preferred for tobacco boxes, butcher block, and has been used for railroad ties, cheap furniture, fence posts as it’s durable in contact with the ground, and telephone poles.
Anthracnose can affect sycamore by infecting twigs and branches. Be sure to prune branches while the tree is dormant. Some fungicides are effective in controlling the disease. Leaf scorch, powdery mildew, and canker stain also affect sycamores.
Sycamore has a fairly extensive range in the eastern US: Maine to Minnesota down to Texas and east to Florida. In Michigan it’s native range is the southern third of the lower peninsula. In my travels I have only found about 4 up here in the north country, all planted by fellow tree lovers.
The largest tree native to the eastern US. Not as long lived as the sequoias of the west, maybe 400-600 years. In my teen years, the 1960’s, we would camp out and hike down by the Grand river east of Grand Ledge. On the neighbors farm there were some unusual trees and one of which was what we now realize was a “stump” of a long dead sycamore. The stump was probably 10 feet in diameter. We could walk inside the hollow stump and the side walls were over our head. I figured we could get 20 people inside the stump and still have room for more. I wished I would have taken a photo of the stump but alas, youth…Not important then. My brother and I went to look for it in the late 90’s but it had been bulldozed for a new house.
