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Tree of the Week: Popular urban street tree has its detractors

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London Plane Tree -- Platanus x acerifolia

Sycamore trees stand out for their green-and-white exfoliating mottled bark, their large size, strong structural shape and ability to tolerate polluted air, compacted soil and hard pruning. The London Plane originated as a natural hybrid between the American Sycamore, P. occidentalis, from this country’s Eastern half and the Oriental Sycamore, P. orientalis, native to Western Asia through the eastern Mediterranean. Several times over the last few centuries plant breeders have crossbred the two species again in order to create increased hybrid resistance to the disfiguring fungal diseases of sycamore anthracnose and powdery mildew.

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Enough people think they have succeeded that the London Plane Tree in its many varieties is probably the most planted urban street tree in the world: See it in London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles. But many detractors consider the tree messy due to early leaf drop from drought, leaf scorch, lace bugs infestation, honeydew drippings on cars, canker stains, lingering susceptibility to fungal infections and bark shedding.

Fast growing to 40 to 80 feet tall and 40-plus feet wide, although usually kept much smaller, the deciduous London Plane Tree typically develops a pyramidal shape with a central leader trunk in youth. In middle age it becomes more rounded. Branches droop as the tree grows older, and the bark is pale in color. The green leaves -- three- to five-lobed, 8- to 12-inches long, 4- to 8-inches wide -- resemble those of the maple tree, hence the name (acerifolia, acerleafed). Small, inconspicuous red flowers in spring result in characteristic 2 or more hard, brown, ping-pong-ball-size fruit balls hanging below each other. The tree wants full sun, takes most soils, tolerates drought but prefers deep moist soils. The roots can lift sidewalks.

The London Plane Tree is strong and sturdy, but it lacks the open grace and capricious twists and turns of our native California Sycamore, P. racemosa.


-- Pieter Severynen

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