Nature Bulletin No. 88   October 19, 1946
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Clayton F. Smith, President
Roberts Mann, Superintendent of Conservation

****:THE SYCAMORE

Indiana folks, far from home, are apt to put their heads together and 
sing a mournful tune about the sycamores that gleam in moonlight on 
the Wabash. The tree is unique. Sometimes it grows straight and tall to 
heights exceeding 150 feet. Others have squatty trunks and massive 
spreading limbs. The outer bark at the base of old trees is reddish 
brown, thick and scaly, but on the young ones and the upper parts of 
older ones it is thin, greenish-gray and smooth. Each year this thin outer 
bark flakes off in patches exposing a white new bark beneath, and the 
upper branches may be mottled or nearly all white, giving the tree a 
weird and ghostly aspect at night.

Also unique are the "buttons": balls about one inch in diameter that 
dangle from the twigs on long thin stems all through the winter. These 
are densely packed with small seeds each having a fluffy parachute. In 
the spring they break up and are widely scattered by the wind. The 
leaves are large and broad, with 3 or more sharp-pointed lobes. They 
whisper as they rustle in a breeze.

There were sycamores in North America when dinosaurs roamed the 
earth. Today it grows in all states south of Maine as far west as Texas 
and Nebraska, but is most abundant and attains its greatest size in the 
rich bottomlands of the streams in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. 
There is only one growing native in Cook County -- a clump of five 
trunks on the bank of Mill Creek, south of the Calumet-Sag Canal in 
Palos. The big ones are often hollow due to injuries by fire or floating 
ice, and there are records of such trees so huge that pioneer families 
camped within them. As late as 1921, there was a sycamore near 
Worthington, Indiana, measuring 42 feet 3 inches in circumference at 5 
feet above the ground -- the largest deciduous tree in North America.

In early days the pioneers stored grain and smoked their meat in hollow 
sycamore logs called "gums". The heartwood is reddish with a silver 
cross-grain. Difficult to split, it takes a beautiful polish as veneer for 
furniture and interior trim. It is also used to make excelsior, for tobacco 
boxes, wooden ware, and those big blocks on which butchers cut meat.

Repeat: MEAT