Yearning to learn more? I implore you to adore a sycamore.

 

My friend Paul Sandman called a few weeks ago wondering if I knew the “Three Sisters.” I’ve driven past the 300-year-old, long decaying American sycamores in Louisville’s Cherokee Park for the past 30 years but knew little.

The next time around, I looked closer. The “Three Sisters” might have been a single sycamore, grazed to the ground by deer or rabbits early in its long life. The subsequent new growth, I suspect, may have shot up as a trio.

Paul remembers ritual Sunday tributes to the “sisters” in the mid-1950s following visits with his godmother. Paul’s father, wife, and kids made the drive home in a 1955 turquoise-blue Chevy Bel Air. “These are the “Three Sisters,” his father solemnly announced each week.

Paul never forgot the sycamores.

While he was being schooled on the “Three Sisters” I was climbing my first tree. Paul and I were born days apart. My sycamore was the lone tree standing at the bottom of a hilly, one-third acre lot my parents bought in Louisville’s expanding suburbs. This was also the only tree I ever fell out of, but fortunately I made a soft landing, at age six, into spongy soil from a low limb.

The sycamore common name sunk in. It was the first tree I learned to identify in honor of not breaking a limb. I mean: one of my limbs. I would adore sycamores forevermore.

The American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) is native throughout the eastern and central U.S., southern Ontario, and northern Mexico.  The fast-growing tree prefers moist conditions and is commonplace along streams and low-lying areas and hard to miss in central Kentucky, where they grow with box elders, silver maples and button bushes, along with walnuts, hickories, pawpaws, and Shumard oaks on the river’s terrace above.

If it weren’t for the sycamore’s exquisite bark, you might not give the tree a moment’s notice. The sycamore’s thin outer layer in varying shades, described by plantsman Travis Anderson as rusty gray to sandy brown, peels off in small sheets as the bark expands, exposing bone-white bark, particularly in the winter landscape. If you look closely, you might also see small, irregular spots the color of pea soup.  

A fallen sycamore

A familiar large sycamore, approximately 100 years old, and 125 feet tall, was toppled on our farm in late September. All the way up in Kentucky, we were not spared strong winds from Hurricane Helene. The roots had rotted, leaving a deep four-foot crater of alluvial muck. The long muscular limbs and trunk were partially carved out by decay.

One less sycamore for squirrels to build their jumbo-sized leafy nests, on thin limbs, high in the canopy, for protection from raccoons and possums.

I went to Jessica Bessin, Mercer County Extension Agent for Horticulture, for diagnosis. There were no remaining octopusian, tentacle roots. Instead, I took a bit off the base of the trunk. It wasn’t sufficient for a pathology test. Jessica reiterated that sycamores are susceptible to anthracnose, and older trees may be more prone to the fungal disease that open the tree to secondary pathogens weakening the tree further over time. It is common to find older sycamores hollowed out by disease.

Autopsy conclusion: the tree died of natural causes.

Politics and sycamores

During a contentious 1974 Kentucky legislative debate over Kentucky’s state tree, the sycamore was a candidate, but a “churlish” legislator argued, “Very often it is a hollow tree.” We don’t want a state tree that has a rotten heart.” In a 1982 article called Maligned sycamore is a national treasure Louisville’s Courier-Journal counterpunched. “There are certainly more rotten hearted men than rotten-hearted trees and we’d bet the ‘The Three Sisters’ have seen their share.”

The Kentucky Coffee tree became the state’s official tree before public opinion turned the title over to the tulip poplar.

Given the extraordinary, mottled bark, many horticulturists praise the sycamore’s beauty despite its flaws. The tree, however, is rarely planted in gardens.  Mike Dirr, in his Manual of Woody Plants, lists only one cultivar—‘Howard.’ “The new growth,” according to Dirr, “is bright yellow that fades in the heat of summer. It is spectacular when the leaves first emerge.”

A chance meeting between the American sycamore and the Old-world sycamore

An east meets west hybrid was discovered in the 17th century in the possible vicinity of London’s Chelsea Physic Garden, where it is suggested, an American sycamore was growing near an old-world sycamore, also known as the Oriental plane. Platanus orientalis is native from Greece through the Balkans to Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. The two produced a hybrid that became known as the London plane (Platanus x hispanica). The London plane became widely planted around the temperate world. Some cultivars are more resistant to anthracnose and powdery mildew, and tolerant of pollution.

Paul Cappiello, Executive Director at Yew Dell Botanical Gardens in Crestwood, Kentucky, emailed a few observations: “London Plane cultivars ‘Yarwood’ and ‘Suttneri’ have been very good. ‘Liberty,’ ‘Columbia,’ and ‘Bloodgood’ all seem to have more significant problems with spring anthracnose, but trees usually grow out of it. Overall, I think all the hybrids are less susceptible to anthracnose than is the straight native sycamore, but despite that susceptibility, I wouldn’t hesitate to plant a straight sycamore. Always been one of my favorite trees and the wood is fabulous wood to carve.”

Live a little

“The London Plane hybrid is an excellent street tree and parking lot tree,” Paul said. “Not much out there more tolerant of miserable soils, poor drainage, and sidewalk tree tombs. All my early memories of trips into ‘the city’ as a kid are full of visions of the camouflage-barked trunks lining the streets of New York City.” 

Paul has another vision. “One of my holy grails of horticulture is a dwarf selection that keeps the branching character and bark but on a tree that tops out at about 40′ tall. Still looking.”

I asked Peter Thurman about pollarding London planes. Peter is a Kew-trained landscape and garden designer and horticultural consultant. He approves of pollarding when done properly.

“Plane trees fully accept pollarding as a management regime. But it is a marmite subject that divides even professionals. One American tree consultant in a debate on social media likened pollarding to child abuse and accused me of being a pedophile because I supported the practice as being a perfectly acceptable method of maintaining a big tree in a small space (or any space for that matter).”

The woodsman

Noble Boswell cuts firewood for a living. As much as 200 ricks a year. A rick is 4 feet high x 8 feet long. That’s a lot of work especially when much of Noble’s splitting is done by hand. Splitting with a maul, at least for the woodsman, is faster than a slow piston-driven splitter. Noble is a strong man.

A day after Hurricane Helene, Noble came down to the farm. He does regular reconnaissance for potential firewood. Emerald ash borer took out dozens of ashes, and numerous storms have knocked down box elders white pines, sassafras, and hackberries over the years. Noble, this go-round, told me there was one tree down and a lot of limbs.

“One tree down isn’t so bad after 50 mph winds,” I said.

He paused and back-pedaled. “Well, it’s a big tree.”

Sycamores are not preferred firewood for the home hearth or wood stoves. An estimated 20 ricks (10-12 pickup truck loads) from the fallen tree will go to a public campsite along the Kentucky River.

Noble’s favorite native hardwoods for heating are Kentucky coffee trees, hickories, white oaks, and black locust. He likes Osage oranges, but they spark a lot. And Sassafras heats up fast but burns quickly. While whittling down the dead sycamore the past six weeks, Noble found an abandoned nest of duck eggs. “Probably wood ducks or mallards,” he said. 

Life’s predicament

My daughter Molly was visiting Louisville when the big sycamore fell. She came out to the farm a few days later.

We went down to the river to poke and climb around the old tree we had been transient observers of for 14 years.  

Hundreds of American sycamore seedlings, with crinkled dry leaves, were shuffling in the breeze, playing long odds for prominence many years from now.

This chore won’t be made any easier in a world prescribed with endless storms, insects, diseases, and a ticking climate change clock.

One long year after another.

Ten years? One hundred years? Or more?

We are rooting for these feisty little sycamores.