Happy Mystery Monday! 🔎 Can you guess who is pictured in photo #1?
The answer to last week’s mystery is the American sycamore, Platanus occidentalis, pictured in photo #2.
The American sycamore, Platanus occidentalis, is a large, fast-growing deciduous tree in the plane tree family, Platanaceae. Native to southeastern Canada and much of the central and eastern United States, it is most at home in bottomland woodlands and floodplains, often growing right at the water’s edge, on sandbars, or even on small stream islands.
Sycamores can reach truly massive proportions, sometimes developing trunks ten feet or more in diameter. Their bark is part of the spectacle: dark, scaly, reddish-brown to gray near the base, but higher up it exfoliates in broad patches to reveal smooth inner bark that is white to cream-colored, giving the tree its distinctive “camouflage” look.
Sycamore thrives best on loam to sandy loam soils with plenty of water, tolerating poor drainage and seasonal flooding, especially in winter. In these dynamic river habitats, it often appears later in succession than willows, river birch, and cottonwood, yet can persist for generations where flooding and disturbance continue. Historically, Native Americans hollowed sycamore trunks into canoes, and the tree’s sweet sap can be tapped in Spring for syrup and sugar.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.