The Glorious Arizona Sycamore

During my earlier sojourns in Arizona, I was totally unaware of the beautiful sycamore trees native to the state. I may have heard of Sycamore Canyon, but that would have been mere words at the time. After all, I was college-age young and had more important matters on my mind, such as becoming a famous journalist and saving the world. Whatever.

Since moving to Prescott, I've lived next to sycamores and come to admire them. For their shade (above, in front of Lincoln School), for their sometimes immense size (along Oak Creek and Beaver Creek, for example), and for their color in all seasons. If any overseas readers are a tad confused at this point, the answer is that, yes, our sycamores are close cousins to the popular London plane tree, which is a hybrid of Asiatic and North American species. Except that ours grow wild.

Apparently Prescott is just a tad too altitudinous for the sycamore, which prospers with permanent water sources even at very low desert levels. I have read that, for all the emphasis on "cottonwood-willow associations" along the Salt River in Phoenix, the river banks were also once home to great stands of sycamore. The trees are found along the Verde and its tributaries; in fact, if you take a close look at the flora of Oak Creek, you'll discover that the most striking trees are the sycamore, not the oak for which it is named.

One of the notable features of the sycamore is the bark, which is nearly white in winter. The bark does darken in the spring and, as the trunk expands, it sloughs off bark, leaving lighter colored patches.

In the winter, our sycamores stand ghostly with their smooth white limbs. Unlike most trees, our planes spread their skin-like bark right over wounds from cut limbs (below).

In spring, the current year's crop of seed balls grow even as the trees leaf out.

In winter, the seed balls remain. If what I have read on the Internet is correct, the tree above with many pods attached to one another is likely a hybrid plane tree from the nursery.

Perhaps logically enough for a tree that inhabits steam sides, the sycamore spreads long shallow roots, creating a problem when it is used to shade sidewalks, as along Gurley at the Sharlot Hall grounds. The treelet below makes a valiant effort each year to emerge from the remains of a very large tree that was causing the sidewalk to buckle (look at the lower right of the picture). Probably at the advice of the lawyers, the tree was cut down. I say hurrah for the life force that keeps bringing the leaves back.

In the fall, our sycamores are among the showier of trees -- and furnish a fine, crunchy lot of leaves to kick through on a crisp autumn day.

Golden sycamores

Suddenly our sycamores are golden. Though I have a quite large folder of sycamore pictures, my fingers would not rest until they had opened the shutter to these brilliant late afternoon trees next the Lincoln School.

The sun, low to the west, sent light through the leaves -- our final hurrah for a dry autumn; this year, these particular sycamores are outshining the earlier performance of the neighborhood aspens.

By Tuesday, we can expect a series of northwest storms lasting three or four days, at last prediction. The leaves will be gone when the storms move out. But the moisture will be very, very welcome. After talking with my Aussie bro this evening, I realized why we've had such a dry period -- he reports that Perth has enjoyed an unusually wet November. It's a seesaw; when bro has unseasonable moisture, he's taking it from us. Been that way for years.

The roots of Prescott

Though I cursed whoever was to blame for cutting down this beautiful old sycamore at the corner of McCormick and Gurley, I understand the reason. Take a look at the bit of sidewalk to the right and note the crack; just the sort of sight to give the city's attorney visions of lawsuits.

The fact is that the Arizona sycamore may be a lovely streetside tree. BUT. Our native sycamore is given to shallow and surface roots, which play havoc with sidewalks, streets and other manmade constructs. Note how far the roots of this big tree spread; if you look carefully at this Sharlot Hall lawn, you will see barren spots beneath which more roots are growing.

Nor are sycamores the only trees to spread out their roots. The specimen above and below is in the small park at the junction of Gurley and Sheldon.

Here's another tree in the same park with a good supply of surface anchors. I wonder the reason: maybe something to do with our rocky subsurface or the necessity of soaking up every little bit of rainfall that happens?

Even our towering Ponderosa pines grow a shallow root system, plus a deep tap root. You can see the obstacles that a pine must overcome below.

A street cut through our local granite revealed this root about a foot below the surface. It probably belongs to a nearby scrub oak.

For picture purposes, creekside trees are perhaps the most interesting. I thank my dotter for thinking to take these images on the February afternoon we spent out at Lynx Lake.

Is this how the trees just grow naturally -- or are we witness to many years of erosion by seasons of heavy run-off?

3 days of spring...

...and over 300 images. Yikes! I'm busy trying to rebuild my inventory so that I can be a slacker every now and then! Suffice it to say I've challenged my walking muscles now that we've had a taste of spring. Too tired to think words, but here are a few of the more interesting sights I've seen along the way.

A bent oak tree, courtesy of the electric utility, which cut off the upright bole to protect its lines.

My favorite large ant nest aboil with residents suddenly warmed out of winter lethargy.

A pothole puddle left from our last storm plus the dead traffic cone that obviously wasn't sufficient warning.

An alleyway dwelling....

Sycamore limbs outlined by a bright sun.

A steel wool rosette in the neighborhood grocery store.

And the wonderfull old, old windmill at the Sharlot Hall museum. Enjoy. I did!

A Late Afternoon Neighborhood Walk

And the first stop is right beside my house, where the biggest of several grown-from-seed apricot trees is covered in blossoms. Unfortunately, I might as well give up all thought of fruit and welcome these early blooming trees as strictly ornamentals. Prescott has a bad habit of late, killing frosts.

Next, a quick stop at my potted garden before venturing forth. Daffodils are one of the few bulb plants guaranteed to survive hungry javelinas; the critters won't touch the poisonous tubers. After two or three frustrating years with wild tulips and hyacinths, I decided to put all my spring bulb money into daffodils!

But time to get on my way. Over at the United Methodist Church, there's spring-type construction activity at the pretty little meditation garden which I usually view from one level up.

Here's one sight in the neighborhood that I'm sure most people miss completely -- a little summer house up among the granites. It sits behind a house that, from the front, looks like any small Prescott cottage on a standard long and narrow city lot.

This afternoon I also discovered that not only do our sycamores very occasionally produce their pompoms in sets of two -- but here in threesies and foursies. This particular tree is quite young, which might explain such productivity.

I found one other fruit (or ornamental) in bloom. And it was abuzz with bees. Very good news. A couple of years ago, as I recall, our bees died from a virus. That was the year that even our scruffy little apple trees were barren.

A difficult picture to get: small tree trunks sawed into short lengths to create an attractive ground cover.

Ending my walk on a sad note: the butterfly is broken! But it might get repaired; the wing is down below sitting in a decorative cane chair.