PHOTO Paul Jost 2001
Eleanor Tillinghast and Lee Frelich at the tree's base while Will Blozan measures the girth of the lower right branch and Michael Davies stands at the first fork of the lower right branch (look close!)

The American Sycamore, also called Eastern Sycamore or American Planetree, is one of the largest eastern hardwoods. In appearance, perhaps the most distinctive, with an enlarged base, massive, straight, mottled trunk, large, spreading, often crooked branches forming a broad, open crown, and with "button balls" swinging in the air. Its distinctive mottled bark flakes off in puzzle-like pieces, exposing yellowish and whitish underbark.

Big tree hunters Will Blozan (left) of North Carolina and Lee Frelich of Minnesota stand at the base of the Pine Plains tree
photo by Paul Jost 2001

This fast-growing, long-lived, lowland tree prefers wet soils of stream banks, flood plains, lakeshores and swamp edges. A popular shade tree, Sycamore grows a larger diameter trunk than any other native eastern hardwood, reaching their greatest size in Ohio and Mississippi Valleys (see Washington Sycamores below), but unlike sequoias, redwoods and bristlecones of California, is old at 5-600 years.

Native Americans and French explorers used American Sycamore trunks for dugout canoes; one such craft was reported to be 65 feet long and weighed 9000 pounds. Hollow trunks of old giant trees were homes for chimney swifts in earlier times, and sheltered wood duck, opossum and raccoon.

This tremendous American Sycamore specimen is growing in a cornfield in eastern New York near the Massachusetts border. In October 2001, big tree experts from the Eastern Native Tree Society (ENTS) visited the tree and tested their high tech tools for measuring big trees, including a $2000 impulse laser.

Identification

Size: Commonly 60 to 100 feet high, and 2 to 8 foot diameters, sometimes much larger (maximum: 175 by 14 feet), with a continuous tapering trunk breaking up near the ground into several large limbs that terminate in crooked branchlets. The crown is open and spreading. Tuliptree may occasionally grow taller, but American Sycamore is generally the most massive eastern hardwood.

Range: Southern Maine to northern Florida, west to central Texas, and north to Nebraska.

Habitat is wet soils of stream banks, flood plains, lake shores, and swamp edges, scattered in mixture with other hardwoods. Dominant in mixed forests, American Sycamore pioneers on exposed upland soils of old fields and strip mines.

Leaves are bright green and paler underneath, alternate, simple, 4 to 8 inches long and wide, broadly ovate, three to five shallow, broad, short-pointed lobes, edged with large teeth, with 3 to 5 main veins, nearly hairless, turning brown in autumn.

Leafstalk are long, stout, with hollow, enlarged bases that cover the next year's buds (only eastern species with this feature). Leaf scars surround buds.

Flowers appear in April to June, as tiny, greenish, in 1 to 2 ball-like, drooping clusters, male and female on separate twigs.

Fruit is 3/4 to 1.5 inch in diameter, usually a tight brown ball hanging on a long, woody stalk, composed of many narrow nutlets with circle of hairy tufts at base, maturing in late autumn and separating in winter or following spring. The small fruits are eaten by a few birds.

Bark is the most striking feature of the tree: smooth, creamy white to yellowish and brown, and mottled, peeling off in large, thin flakes, exposing patrches of brown, green and gray underbark. The base of large trees becomes dark brown, deeply furrowed into broad, scaly ridges.

Twigs are greenish to brownish, slender, zigzag, with ring scars at nodes.

Buds are lateral, conical, covered by a single outer scale, sticky within, with false end bud.

Wood is hard, tough, coarse-grained, hard to split, and used for boxes, barrels, butcher blocks, cabinets, furniture, millwork, and flooring. Also used for pulpwood, particleboard and fiberboard.

Similar Species: Arizona Sycamore and California Sycamore. Old World sycamores: London Planetree (P. acerifolia), with two fruit balls per stalk, and Oriental Planetree (P. orientalis), with several fruit balls per stalk. Generally more yellowish underbark.

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Champion Trees and Ancient Forests — www.championtrees.org — updated: 7/14/2002