Western Sycamore is a tall, airy, tree with large, 5-pointed leaves and a pale, blotchy trunk with thin, flaky bark. Its tiny flowers and fruit come in tight clusters that look like little balls strung on short, drooping twigs. This member of the always grows near water and may reach a height of 90 feet.

Roots: Its deep root system serves two major functions: to retrieve water from far below the surface, which helps the tree survive the hot, dry summers, and to anchor the tree securely in sandy, gravelly soil, especially important during stormy winter weather and flash floods.

Western Sycamore has developed a rare adaptation to its special environmental conditions. When necessary, trunk and branches can take on the functions of roots and vice versa. This adaptation helps the tree survive changing ground levels, a common occurrence in its preferred habitat near streams and one that would be fatal to most other trees.

For example, the soil around a tree growing near a creek easily washes away in a flood, exposing its roots. The newly exposed roots can now develop bark to protect the tree. The opposite situation occurs when a tree becomes inundated with mud from a flash flood. Soil and rock may cover several feet of the trunk. The buried portion of the trunk is able to grow new rootlets to gather water near the new soil surface. The fuzzy leaves are on the branches, with leaf stalks that are only about 3 inches long and that are 4 to 10 inches across. A leaf usually has 5 deeply pointed with veins that radiate from the base like the fingers of your hand.

Very fresh leaves range in color from yellow-green to rusty-red. They are so densely covered with soft hairs on both sides that the leaves feel soft and thick, almost like felt. More mature leaves are green and less hairy than young leaves, but they retain a heavy, hairy cover, especially on the undersides.

Note: The hairs on the undersides of Sycamore leaves are so fine that our nasal passages do not trap them well when we inhale them. People with asthma should be cautious about activities, such as raking, that stir up dry Sycamore leaves. Western Sycamore has and on the same tree. The male flowers, with , are clustered in small balls about 3/8 inch in diameter. Two to three of those yellowish balls hang on a 3-inch-long stalk. The female flowers, with , are clustered in larger balls about 1 inch in diameter. Three to 5 of them hang on a 6-inch-long stalk, separate from the male flower stalk. They are maroon-red when they are in flower, usually between February and April. The fruits form bunches of little brown seeds held in the 1-inch-round balls of the female flowers. When they are ripe, the seed balls break apart and the seeds disperse in the wind. Our native Sycamore is a common tree below 4,000 feet along streamsides and in canyons. Western Sycamore is found over much of California, west of the and the , and south of . Its range extends into . No other plants in the Sycamore family are native to California. The Sycamore that is widely planted along city streets is the London Planetree (Platanus ×acerifolia), a between the American Sycamore (P. occidentalis) of eastern North America and the Oriental Planetree (P. orientalis) of Europe and western Asia.

Similar Plants: Sycamore leaves look similar to those of Big-leaf Maple, but they are not related. In all seasons, you can distinguish the two trees by their bark. Big-leaf Maple has rough, thick, dark gray bark, while Sycamore has smooth, thin and flaky, light-colored bark. If you enjoy falling leaves in autumn, and have plenty of space in your garden, then you’ll treasure this large tree. Depending on the weather, it might leaf out and lose its leaves in spring a couple of times before keeping its leaves during the summer.
Full sun.
Occasional to regular summer water.
Tolerates clay soil.
Some birds, such as Purple Finch, American Goldfinch, and Lesser Goldfinch, eat both the seeds and the buds of Sycamore trees. It is a for the Western Tiger Swallowtail. Platanus is from the Greek platanos, “plane tree”, and is perhaps derived from the Greek platy, “broad”, alluding to the broad leaves; racemosa indicates that the flowers are in a .

Platano means “banana” in Spanish, but Sycamores are not related to the banana tree (Musa acuminata).

Our word, sycamore, comes from the Late Latin sycomorus, from the Greek sykomoros, “fig-mulberry”, and was originally applied to a type of fig common in Egypt and Syria.