Sycamore

“ The keys of the sycamore, to take a single instance, when detached from the tree in autumn, fall spirally through the air owing to the twist of the winged arm, and are carried so far that, as every gardener knows, young sycamore trees rank among the commonest weeds among our plots and flower-beds. ”

“ Children play on this white, shining, sandy beach, under the leafless sycamore; they look for no shade, they would find no shade; there is neither rock, nor shrub, nor evergreen-tree,—nothing but the white sand, and the dead sycamore, and in the topmost branches the halcyon's great nest.
Is it not a place for children? A little flourish of imagination, and we see them,—Silas, who beats the drum, and Columbia, who carries the flag, manifest leaders of the wild little company, mermen and mermaids all; and the music is fit for the Siren, and the beauty would shame not Venus. ”

“ Morning and evening a shroud of chill, white mist fell upon them, or they would have mocked the sunrise and the sunset. Along the summit of low hills ran a comb of fire—the scarlet of the sumach, leaf and berry; underfoot were crimson vines like trails and splashes of blood; into the streams from which the wanderers stooped to drink, fell the gold of the sycamore. From the hills they looked down upon a red and yellow world, a gorgeous bourgeoning and blossoming that put the spring to shame, a sea of splendor with here and there a dark-green isle of cedar or of pine. ”

“ Then, whistling off the setter, who was barking, jumping, and whining ecstatically at the foot of the sycamore-tree, he turned and strode away through the moon-shadows of the forest, with the dog and the hired boy at his heels. The diminished raccoon family, with beating hearts and trembling nerves, snuggled down together into the depths of the sycamore, and dreamed not of the doom preparing for them. ”

“ Examine the flowers; are they pollinated by insects or by the wind? Trace the development of the fruit. [Pg 158]
Fig. 128.—The Sycamore.
The sycamore (Fig. 128) is one of the best-known trees in this country, and often grows to a great height. Its leaves (Fig. 33) are large and five-pointed, the main veins spreading from the top of the leaf stalk. When young they are of a beautiful red colour. In hot weather the leaves become very sticky with a sugary syrup called honey-dew. The sycamore is indeed a species of maple, and is closely related to the sugar maple of North America. ”

“ The evening sun seemed to shine more yellowly there than anywhere else this autumn—stretching its rays, as the hours grew later, under the lowest sycamore boughs, and steeping the ground-floor of the dwelling, with its green shutters, in a substratum of radiance which the foliage screened from the upper parts. Beneath these sycamores on the town walls could be seen from the sitting-room the tumuli and earth forts of the distant uplands; making it altogether a pleasant spot, with the usual touch of melancholy that a past-marked prospect lends. ”

“ Ann never teased; she was just simple and sincere and sweet. But it would be instinctive with her to pick up the grammar as an excuse for the stroll along the bluff with her lover.
Of an oak or a maple, no matter how dense the foliage, one has a distinct image of the individual leaf; but of the sycamore—the American plane-tree—you may see thousands, and carry away only an impression of a silvery column and an enormous dome of green gossamer—a diaphanous mesh of vernal lace, whose pattern dissolves momently in the sun, and frays and ravels in the wind. ”

“ Our Sycamore would be very ill suited to make the sides and roof of an arbour, but before the time of Shakespeare it seems certain that the name was attached to our present tree, and it is so called by Gerard and Parkinson.
[289] The Sycamore is chiefly planted for its rapid growth rather than for its beauty. It becomes a handsome tree when fully grown, but as a young tree it is stiff and heavy, and at all times it is so infested with honeydew as to make it unfit for planting on lawns or near paths. ”

“ The bay and the sycamore, the oak and the cypress, reach a growth unparalleled, in those fertile lowlands bordering the Red River. From every tree, moreover, hang long, large masses of moss, presenting to the eye unaccustomed to them, a striking and singular appearance. ”

“ The Sycamore is not unfrequently planted in streets and before houses, on account of its spreading branches and thick shade, for which it bears a high reputation. Of this tree Sir T. D. Lauder says, "the spring tints are rich, tender, glowing, and harmonious. In summer, its deep green hue accords well with its grand and massy form; and the browns and dingy reds of its autumnal tints harmonize well with the other colours of the mixed grove, to which they give a depth of tone. It is a favourite Scotch tree, having been much planted about old aristocratic residences in Scotland." ”

“ Break open the tightly sealed, varnished bud of the lilac tree, and out pours that incomparable fragrance of Spring, an odor that challenges all of the arts and sciences or alchemy to produce. One of the most notable trees in winter is the plane-tree or buttonwood, wrongly called sycamore, a term which can only be applied correctly to the Ficus sycamorus, or true sycamore, a tree closely allied to the fig, and a native of the far East. ”

“ The sycamore is the favourite tree at the Mountain Farms of Cumberland and Westmoreland, as it affords the best shelter from rain, and the most thorough protection from the heat of the sun, during sheep-shearing. A special feature of the valley as you go down Langdale from Blea Tarn, is the abundance of sycamore ”

“ And so the instance in that Text, is very properly made in the Sycamore Tree, one of the largest and less removable Trees among them. A Tree so lasting and well rooted, that the Sycamore which Zacheus ascended, is still shewn in Judæa unto Travellers; as also the hollow Sycamore at Maturæa in Ægypt, where the blessed Virgin is said to have remained: which though it relisheth of the Legend, [245] yet it plainly declareth what opinion they had of the lasting condition of that Tree, to countenance the Tradition ”

“ Sycamore, sik′a-mōr, n. a fruit-tree of the fig family, common in Palestine, &c.: a species of maple, in Scotland usually called plane-tree: in America, the native plane. [Gr. sykomoros—sykon, a fig, moron, black mulberry.] ”

“ Sunk in such pleasant fancies I lay beneath a spreading sycamore, and with half-closed lids invoked the shades of that delightful vision before me, when the tramp of feet, moving across the low brushwood, suddenly aroused me. I started up on one knee, and listened. The next moment three men emerged from the wood into the path. The two foremost, dressed in blouses, were armed with carbines and a sabre; the last carried a huge sack on his shoulders, and seemed to move with considerable difficulty. ”

“ The nests were hidden now in the leaves, and as she looked up into the tree an old fancy came back into her mind and she said: “The sycamore is like Ely Cathedral, so cool and so airy; to hop [236] from one branch to another must be like sitting first on one chair and then on another; the pigeons shorten wing and alight to rest a while before they continue their voyages, just as the tourists come in and sit for a few moments before they motor on to Cambridge or King’s Lynn.” ”

“ In leaf and fruit and bark-shedding habit, it is easily recognized as a sycamore, though in this species more than one ball dangles from each stem.
The exactions of city life limit the number of tree species that will do well. Our native sycamore patiently endures the foul breath of factory chimneys, and helps, in the smallest, downtown city parks, to make green oases in burning deserts of brick and stone pavements. But it is subject to the ravages of insect and fungous enemies to a greater extent than the oriental species. ”

“ The Sycamore Maple. In the rows on rows of maples so common in our towns and cities one will [81] often find a leaf larger, heavier, and coarser than any of the others. This variety, like the Norway, is an importation from Europe, known as the sycamore maple because of its resemblance to the sycamore leaf. It is easily identified by its large size, coarseness, the very long, thick red stem, and by the fact that its entire edge is finely toothed,—in which point it differs from all the foregoing varieties. ”

“ Nothing can be more beautiful than the face of the country around the city, combining every requisite for agriculture, for prospect, or for embellishment. Much oil is made here.
There were some sycamore-trees in the environs of the city, but their leaves and appearance were unlike the tree to which we give that name in England. The sycamore of the Levant and of Egypt somewhat resembles a large walnut-tree, but with a smaller leaf. It is most remarkable in its fruit, which is in shape like a fig, and in size as big as a medlar. ”

“ Another tree used in avenues, and which grows to a greater height and with larger limbs than the lebekh, is the Egyptian sycamore. It is a species of the Indian fig. The largeness of its limbs enables you to see the whole of its skeleton. The skeleton of the lebekh is concealed by the multiplicity of its branches, and the density of its foliage. There is a fine specimen of this sycamore in the first Nubian village, on the way from Assouan to Philæ, and another equally good on the bank of the river just opposite Philæ. Trees of this kind have more of the appearance of age than others in Egypt. ”

“ I continued on foot from sunrise till sunset, without seeing a living thing, unless, perhaps, a distant deer; and halted for the night, in a forest of thick timber. I found a large, dead sycamore standing upright, with a complete chamber formed in its trunk by decay. I kindled a fire in front of it, and filled the empty trunk with dried grass, and pea-vines for a couch. I was wearied and slept soundly, until near midnight, when I was awakened by the intense heat. The fire had by some means communicated to a pile of fuel, which I had [246] collected to sustain it during the night. ”

“ The queen's messengers searched through all the forest but could not find him; so they went back [75] to her empty handed, not having either the king's crown or his heart to show. "Fools!" she cried, looking in her magic crystal, "he was in the big sycamore under which you stopped to give your horses provender!"
The sycamore said to the king's son, "The queen's eye is on you; get down and run for your life till you get to the hollow tarn-stones among the hills! But if you stay here, when you wake to-morrow you will be dead." ”

“ The sycamore and the date-palm, both importations from Central Africa, have better adapted themselves to their exile, and are now fully naturalized on Egyptian soil.
The sycamore grows in sand on the edge of the desert as vigorously as in the midst of a well-watered country. Its roots go deep in search of water, which infiltrates as far as the gorges of the hills, and they absorb it freely, even where drought seems to reign supreme. The heavy, squat, gnarled trunk occasionally attains to colossal dimensions, without ever growing very high. ”

“ Neither sycamore nor plane are natives of the United Kingdom. The plane, though it excels all other trees for planting in smoky towns like London, does not take kindly to the cooler atmosphere of Scotland and northern England. Not so the sycamore, which, although naturally a product of the mountain ranges of Central and Southern Europe, nowhere flourishes more freely and sows itself more abundantly than in North Britain. ”

“ Other angels ministered to the pink coral glumes of the sycamore; others, again, daintily untwisted the leafage of the wild rose in the hedge; others delighted to unfold the tufts upon the elder. But the angels that seemed to be busiest were those that made the vivid emerald of the 'dog's mercury' contrast with the faded red of the bracken in the woods, and where the purple birches showed against the flowering larches {229} added moment by moment a deeper, ruddier purple to the trees' beauty and a finer flash of green to the surrounding wood to set the purple off. ”

“ Late frosts also often injure its young twigs. The Oriental sycamore, which is the European species, is more hardy in these respects than the native one and is therefore often chosen as a substitute.
Value for planting: The Occidental sycamore is now planted very little, but the Oriental sycamore is used quite extensively in its place, especially as a shade tree. The Oriental sycamore is superior to the native species in many ways. It is more shapely, faster growing, and hardier than the native one. Both sycamores will bear transplanting and pruning well.
Fig. ”

“ This plant makes its home on the Sycamore leaf, and unknowingly disfigures its kind host.
Before the leaves are quite out the flowers appear. They grow in drooping spikes (4) , or large tassels of a pale yellowish green colour. Each tassel is made up of many separate flowers, and most of these flowers have a calyx with five to twelve narrow strap-shaped sepals, and a corolla of the same number of yellow-green petals. There is also a ring of slender stamens standing round a flat green cushion or disc. In the centre sits the seed-vessel, which has two curved horns at the top. ”

“ 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. ”