The genus Platanus, which undoubtedly derives its name from the Greek, in reference either to its broad leaves or spreading shade, is, according to the best authorities, almost the sole representative of a very isolated type of catkin-bearing trees; the five or six forms which it includes constituting a distinct
natural order, the Platanaceae, though they may be related to Liquidambar. They are trees which commonly reach a considerable height, up to even a hundred feet; with nearly cylindrical stems; in old specimens, of enormous girth and with wide-spreading branches. It was probably with reference to the general outline of the Oriental Plane that Spenser, in his
"Faerie Queene" (1589), borrowing his epithet, no doubt, as was his wont, from some classical authority, speaks of "the Platane round."
The manner in which the bark flakes off in rectangular scales is very characteristic, and is, perhaps, a main reason for the impunity with which the Plane thrives in the
soot laden atmosphere of the metropolis. A copious annual crop of smoothly-polished leaves, readily washed by the slightest shower, and thus affording a large surface to the food-giving light and air, and a bark which thus yearly throws off all impurity, constitute an ideal city tree. We can hardly, perhaps, expect the enthusiasm of the poet to be quickly roused by the foreign charms of exotic trees, so that it is naturally the poets of America, the native home of one variety of the Plane, who sing its praises. It is to the appearance produced by this shedding of the bark that Bryant alludes when he writes of the Green River:
"Clear are the depths where its eddies play,
And dimples deepen and whirl away;
And the Plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot
The swifter current that mines its root."
The leaves are large, with stalks of some length, and prominent veins, generally five in number, radiating to the acute points of their gracefully-lobed outline. Individual leaves may be as much as nine inches long and eight in breadth, and though a certain general character of outline distinguishes the different geographical "races," the variety of detail, even on a single bough, is practically infinite. No leaf rebels more against the misrepresentations of the geometrical school of draughtsmen.
The bark is by itself sufficient to distinguish the Plane from the sycamore
(Acer pseudo-platanus), which is commonly confounded with it, especially in Scotland; but the sycamore has also its leaves in opposite pairs and far less smooth, whilst in autumn they are almost always marked with the round blots of an ink-black parasitic fungus.
When the foliage is yet young, the drooping flower-stalks are produced, the pollen-bearing flowers being on distinct branches from those that yield fruit, though either kind is collected together into the characteristic "buttons," or globular catkins. The Oriental Plane is first mentioned, among English writers, by William Turner, "the father of English botany," in his
"Herbal," printed at Cologne in 1568; and in 1596 John Gerard had it growing in his garden in Holborn, the history of his specimen being subsequently given by him in his
"Herball" (1597), p. 1304, as follows:
"My seruant, William Marshall, whom I sent into the Mediterranean Sea as chirurgion vnto the Hercules of London, found diuers trees heerof growing in Lepantae, hard by the sea side, at the entrance into the towne, a port of Morea, being a part of Greece, and from thence brought one of those rough buttons, being the fruit thereof."
Our Transatlantic neighbors, who pride themselves on their retention of Elizabethan English, still call the Plane the Button-ball, or Button-wood.
The flowering branches are from two to six or more inches long, bearing from one to five, but most commonly three, of these buttons. Those that produce pollen are simply collections of shortly-stalked stamens mixed with a few narrow-pointed scales, and, as is generally the case with catkin-bearing trees, the whole branchlet falls when the pollen has been discharged. The fertile florets, too, are of the simplest structure possible, being merely one-chambered and one-seeded ovaries, each prolonged into a style, curved at its apex, and with a sticky stigma down one side; whilst as this ovary enlarges into a little nut, a tuft of bristles grows up from its base, giving the burrlike character to the whole catkin.
The timber of the Plane is fine-grained, and of a brownish-yellow oak
color, somewhat resembling beech, prettily marked, and thus well adapted for ornamental use. It is almost exclusively used by carriage-builders and pianoforte-makers, for the sides of wagonettes and the bridges in the piano, the manner in which it "takes paint" fitting it for the former purpose, and its toughness and hardness, by which the pins are securely held, for the latter. When old, the wood sometimes has dark veins in it, like those of walnut.
One of the most interesting points connected with the Plane is the geographical distribution of its various forms, which most botanists treat as distinct species, though they have utterly failed to bring forward any one strongly distinctive character. No Planes are known to the east of Kashmir, though, on the analogy of the distribution of tulip-trees--if the theory of the eastward retreat of the European flora of Miocene times towards America be well founded--we might expect them to occur in China or Japan. In this connection it is interesting to note, though the evidence must be but slight, that the fossil Plane-leaves found in the Miocene rocks of Europe are believed by our greatest authority, Dr. Oswald Heer of Zurich, to be more nearly related to the Occidental than to the Oriental form. There can be little doubt that the Oriental Plane is indigenous in Persia, though it has also been cultivated in that country--where it is known as chinar--from a very early period; whilst if of human introduction in the Balkan peninsula, that introduction must probably date back more than two thousand years. In Spain, and even in our own country, it seems that its short history has permitted of the origin of tolerably distinct variations.
It seems that the American Plane does not attain the size or age of its Oriental brother. Neither form occurs commonly in forests or even in large groups; but single trees growing in plains of river alluvium, in which it rejoices, sometimes reach enormous dimensions, and from the gratefulness of their shade in hot countries have long been venerated. At Caphyae, in Arcadia, a beautiful Plane-tree was shown to Pausanias, which was said to have been planted 1,300 years before by Menelaus, the husband of Helen, before his departure for the Trojan War. When Xerxes invaded Greece, another Plane so delighted him by its size, that he--somewhat unkindly, but, no doubt, with kind intentions--encircled it with a collar of gold, stamped a figure of it on a gold medal which he continually wore, and tarried so long beneath it as to ruin his chances of success. Pliny speaks of a Plane in Lycia over eighty feet in circumference, so that eighteen persons could dine within it; whilst at Buyukdere, three leagues from Constantinople, there still exists a tree of this species, 100 feet high, 165 feet in girth, and 130 feet in the spread of its branches, being, perhaps, over 2,000 years old.
To the student of philosophy the Plane must always be associated with the groves of the Academe, in which walked the earliest of the peripatetic philosophers. This may have been in the mind of the Poet-Laureate, when he associated the Princess Ida's female Academe with "the thick-leaved platans of the vale."
The true Oriental Plane has a rounded outline, a leaf with a wedge-shaped base, and deeply five-lobed, and generally two or more "buttons" in the fructification. The Spanish variety has very slightly divided leaves, and most of our London Plane-trees belong to an intermediate form
(P. orientalis acerifolia), somewhat resembling the sycamore in its leaf outline. Of this form there are many fine specimens in and around the metropolis, as in Berkeley, Bedford, and Mecklenburg Squares, and the well-known trees in Wood Street, Cheapside, and in Stationers' Hall Court. The latter was planted by Mr. Broome, treasurer of the Company, about fifty-five years ago. There are also fine specimens, over 100 years old, at Stanwell Place, Staines, and at Shadwell Court, Norfolk; and down to 1881 a magnificent tree of equal age was standing in the garden of Lambeth Palace, where a fine representative still lingers.
So much confusion has arisen from the similarity of the Occidental to the Maple-leaved Plane
(P. orientalis acerifolia), that it is impossible to sift the evidence as to their relative hardiness; but neither kind seems to compare for longevity with the true Oriental form. Philip Miller, indeed, who was gardener to the Apothecaries' Company at Chelsea from 1722 to 1771, states that he knew from his own observation that the Maple-leaved Plane was only a seedling variety of the Oriental; in which case the former has, perhaps, been too short a time in existence to be fairly tested.
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