The claim attached to this sycamore is a rumour, and we are keeping it one.
American Sycamore
Platanus occidentalis
Platanus occidentalis is the sycamore of the eastern United States and the American parent of the London plane, the hybrid that lines half the streets in Europe. We map 10 of them, in 9 cities.
At home, on wet river ground, it gets enormous. The Pinchot Sycamore in Simsbury, on the flood plain of the Farmington River, is the national champion of its species: 884 centimetres round and wider than it is tall. The Sunderland Buttonball Tree, on the verge of North Main Street, is traditionally dated before 1665 and widely called the largest tree in Massachusetts; buttonball is the New England name, after the seed balls that hang on the bare winter limbs. In Europe a full grown specimen standing in its own right is unusual. Ljubljana keeps two, the last of an avenue drawn on a map of the city in 1744, and Como's is the tallest tree on its lakefront walk.
Houston
Ljubljana
Two trees are all that is left of an avenue that once ran from the foot of Ljubljana Castle to the start of the road toward Dolenjska, a double row of planes planted along what was then the edge of...
A short walk from its twin on Streliska ulica stands the second survivor of Ljubljana's vanished plane-tree avenue, rooted exactly at the corner where Streliska meets Strossmayerjeva.
Chadds Ford
This sycamore was already 168 years old on the day the Battle of Brandywine broke around it.
Simsbury
This sycamore is considerably wider than it is tall: about thirty metres up, and an average spread of forty three metres across.
Photo: Marcdcheung (CC BY 4.0)
Sunderland, Massachusetts
The plaque at its foot dates the tree against the US Constitution.
Photo: Tman21901 (CC BY 3.0)
Como
At thirty three metres this is the tallest tree on Como's lakefront walk, and the only American on it.
Ottawa
The register that lists this tree files it under Northern eccentric, which is a polite way of saying it should not really be here.
Portland
The city's note on this tree reads, in full, "Big 13'".
Wilmington, Delaware
This sycamore spreads almost as wide as it stands tall.
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