When journeying through the older towns of New England, the melancholy
forms of the ill-fated Planes attract our attention by their superior
size, and still more by the marks of decay which are stamped upon all.
This appearance is most remarkable in the early part of summer; for the
trees are not dead, but some hidden malady caused the first crop of
foliage to perish for several successive years. The trees, after putting
forth a new crop of leaves from a second growth of buds, had not time to
ripen their wood before the frosts of winter came and destroyed their
recent branches. This disaster was repeated annually for ten or fifteen
years, causing an accumulation of twigs at the extremities of the
branches, making a broom-like appendage, and greatly deforming the spray
of the tree.
The Western Plane, or Buttonwood, is a well-known tree by the waysides
in New England and in the forests of the Middle and Western States. It
belongs to a genus of which there are only three known species, and this
genus constitutes a whole natural family. It may, therefore, be
something more than a fanciful hypothesis, that all its noble kindred
have perished and disappeared from the face of the earth, with other
plants of a distant geological era, and that the three remaining species
are destined to share the same fate, as signalized by the mysterious
fatality which has attended both the Western and Oriental Plane. The
Buttonwood is remarkable for its great height and magnitude, its large
palmate leaves, and its globular fruit. The foliage is rather sparse, of
a light, rusty green, and resembles in many points that of the common
grapevine. Near the insertion of every leaf, and a little above it, is a
stipule forming a plaited ruff that encircles the growing branch. These
ruff-like appendages are among its generic marks of distinction.
“The Buttonwood,” says Michaux, “astonishes the eye by the size of its
trunk and the amplitude of its head. But the white elm has a more
majestic appearance, which is owing to its great elevation, to the
disposition of its principal limbs, and the extreme elegance of its
summit.” He considers the Buttonwood “the largest and loftiest tree of
the United States.” He mentions one growing on a small island in the
Ohio River, which at five feet from the ground measured forty feet and
four inches in circumference; and he found another on the right bank of
the Ohio that measured, at four feet from the ground, forty-seven feet
in circumference, or nearly sixteen feet in diameter, and showed no
marks of decay. He states that the Buttonwood is confined “to moist, wet
grounds, where the soil is loose, deep, and fertile, and it is never
found upon dry lands of irregular surface.”
It was probably the rapid growth and great size of the Buttonwood that
caused our ancestors to plant it so extensively as a shade-tree. It
rises also to a great height before it sends out any branches, thereby
affording the inmates of houses the advantage of its shade, without
intercepting their prospect, and without interfering with passing
objects when planted by roadsides. But these noble trees, so conspicuous
and so thrifty thirty years ago, have been slowly perishing from some
mysterious cause which no theory can satisfactorily explain. It is
generally supposed to be connected with a want of hardihood in the
constitution of the tree, that renders it unable to endure all the
vicissitudes of a Northern climate.
In England the same misfortune has fallen upon both the American and
Oriental Plane. The late spring frosts are mentioned as the probable
cause of the phenomenon, though there is but little resemblance between
our climate and that of England. This tendency of the two species has
prevented the general planting of them for shade and ornament. English
writers give their preference to the American Plane, which they assert
equals the other in size, and surpasses it in beauty of foliage. In
England the American Plane has frequently attained a very great
magnitude. Selby mentions one which, at forty years from the time it was
planted, measured a hundred feet in height. The specific differences
between the two Planetrees consist chiefly in the size and shape of
their leaves, those of the Oriental Plane being smaller, and more deeply
lobed or divided into segments. Both species have the same habit of
annually shedding their bark, leaving the trunk with a smooth and
whitish surface.