Description:

One of the largest eastern hardwoods, with an enlarged base, massive, straight trunk, and large, spreading, often crooked branches forming a broad open crown.

Height:

60-100'.

Diameter:

2-4', sometimes much larger.

Leaves:

4-8" long and wide (larger on shoots). Broadly ovate, with 3 or 5 broad short-pointed lobes; wavy edges with scattered large teeth; 5 or 3 main veins from notched base. Bright green above, paler beneath and becoming hairless except on veins; turning brown in autumn. Leafstalk long, stout, covering side bud at enlarged base.

Bark:

smooth, whitish and mottled; peeling off in large thin flackes, exposing patches of brown, green, and gray; base of large trunks dark brown, deeply furrowed into broad scaly ridges.

Twigs:

greenish, slender, zigzag, with ring scares at nodes.

Flowers:

tiny; greenish; in 1-2 ball-like drooping clusters; male and female clusters on separate twigs; in spring.

Fruit:

1" in diameter; usually 1 brown ball hanging on long stalk, composed of many narrow nutlets with hair tufts; maturing in autumn, separating in winter.

Habitat:

Wet soils of stream banks, flood plains, and edges of lakes and swamps; dominant in mixed forests.

Comments:

Sycamore pioneers on exposed upland sites such as old fields and strip mines. The wood is uused for furniture parts, millwork, flooring, and specialty products such as butcher blocks, as well as pulpwood, particleboard, and fiberboard. A shade tree, sycamore grows to a larger trunk diameter then any other nativehardwood. The present champion's trunk is about 11' in diameter; an earlier giant's was nearly 15'. The hollow trunks of old, giant trees were homes for chimney sifts in earlier times.