THE SYCAMORE

Here is a tree that might have been created as the friend of mankind. Out of all the western sylva, the forests vast and somber, the ranked species in their cohorts, each with its boast of economic value, this one stands apart. For it grows singly or in little groves in the interior valleys, along the sandy washes, the upsidedown rivers of the desert, in the cool of the canyon walls, more needed where you find it than valuable if felled, sawed, dressed, and exported. With its intimately leaning trunks it seems, even in the wild, to be pre-formed for bending above the rooftree that will come to it. The quality of its shade broad but filmy-leaved (more like some Eastern hardwood's) is never so dense as to be stuffy; ever the breeze moves under the boughs, and any stir of air, in the warm habitats it chooses, even the rangeland's or the wheat field's, is better than none. So the white-faced Herefords stand or lie for hours in the long burning summers beneath the Sycamores.

Whether this tree throws shadows of palmate leaf and zigzag twig upon the stone of a canyon's walls or on doorstep and lintel, that scrawl is like a loved and familiar handwriting to the westerner. And that marbled bark, forever sloughing off in irregular mottled flakes of brown, tan, green, gray, and off-white, is a detritus not so much rubbishy as comfortably homelike.

Certainly there is a pleasant quality about the shade cast by this, the outstanding shade tree of the Southwest. For one thing, the leaves are not glittering on the upper surface a great relief in the hard-leaved evergreen woodlands of the desert and southern California where so many leaves are blades turned against the tired eyebalis. Sycamore leaves have at most a soft shine to them, when the down wears off, and the undersides remain permanently coated in rusty or gray woolly hairs so that when the breeze spins the blades over they gleam silvery but cool. More, the shade, thought so ample in summer, is taken down by Nature in the short period of Southwestern winter, allowing all the warmth and light in the sky to penetrate to soil or roof. Unlike the conifers, the Sycamore does not hold the cold, but scouts it.

The Picturesque SYCAMORE

Call it Plane, or Sycamore, or Buttonwood, or aliso as the Spanish-speaking pioneers of the Southwest did, our Western Platanus cannot help falling into picturesque attitudes, and a Sycamore that looks regular, like forestgrown type of tree, is a rarity. When growing on stream banks the tree is almost certain to lean, sprawl, or fork deeply, often in a V-shape. But a trunk with a J-shape is common too, even well back from water, in the dry ranch-land grass, for there is something slouching about most bottom-land Sycamores. Indeed, some pasture specimens never stand up at all, but may be seen lying down on their backs, as it were, in a meadow, sending up vertical branches all from one side, like a horse scratching his back on the ground and kicking up his legs! But in general the trees on rich alluvial lands that, however, stand well up and away from the actual stream or gully bank have very straight but short trunks clear of branches. As time goes on, this rapid-growing tree will thicken the base of the trunk into a great barrel-shaped affair, without pruning many of its lower branches, so that the true trunk ends abruptly in a perfect jet of trunklike branches and these, in turn gracefully arching, may sweep low at the tips. This is the grandest, most lovable form of the tree, and it may perhaps be called the normal form.

The Sycamore's greatest moment of beauty comes to it in earliest spring or at the end of winter. For then the flowers bloom upon the crooked, golden-fuzzy twigs. The heads of the male flowers are no bigger than peas, and filled with long-haired scales, so that they seem like little greenish or yellow chenille balls. The female heads are the showy ones, the size of big marbles, with deep and bright brown and remarkably long and threadthin styles bristling out all over them. Coincidentally the leaves begin to unfold, like opening hands; all covered with golden down the palmate blades shine in the sunlight as if rimed with a glow. Then in summer when the foliage is full but fresh, the female heads ripen into fruit, each tiny seed-like nutlet deeply imbedded in a tuft of silken gray hairs. In winter these break up like so many dandelion heads blowing, and so the nutlets go gliding away on the wind to some other canyon or pasture.

The Arizona and New Mexican specimens differ so markedly in leaf that they have been described as a separate form, variety Wrightii (Watson) Benson. It has deeply 5to 7-lobed leaves, with slender and elongate lobes and the bases, deeply heart shaped. This is a more beautiful foliage than the Californian, but as there are only leaf differences, the desert trees are not quite valid for a separate species.

The Sycamore is the largest desert tree of Arizona, growing up to 80 feet in height. Sycamore Canyon is but one of the many places where one can see the Arizona variety, but it is certainly the most romantic, and still, because of the rugged nature of the country, little visited. It lies for some 25 miles in the deep-cut bed of Sycamore Creek, which flows into the Verde River in the Coconino National Forest. Indian caves are still found in it and once, according to local legend, it was a hide-out of bad men and renegade Indians. Today the great Sycamores throw their shadows on the canyon walls in peace. One specimen measures 17 feet in circumference, perhaps the doughtiest hardwood tree in the Southwest.

Many birds love the desert Sycamore. The red-tailed hawk will commonly nest in it and will perch all day in its groves on the look-out, sallying forth with its cry of killee, killee! Because Sycamores are so often hollow, Gila and Lewis and Arizona woodpeckers all delight to nest in them. And if ever you find yourself down on the Border, in the Chiricahua and Huachuca Mountains, in summer, watch for a tiny comet of a bird with bronzy green back, metallic purple cap, and emerald-green gorget. That will be the rare Rivioli Hummingbird, up from Central America, that commonly nests in the canyon Sycamores, at 5000 to 7000 feet altitude, and sometimes lines its babies' cradle with down of the swinging fruit-balls plucked from the tree.

Love Song for November

The Sycamore was a proud siren As she brightened the desert with her lilt of song. Wind's teasing hands enticed the haughty one With lazy pleasure..

He fondled her hair and told her winsome love tales But when he grew more ardent, she shook away his pleading

"You are too inconstant, Wind

You seek your own ways, leaving me alone too often."

She turned quickly from him to sing again her haunting song.

Sun blazed upon her with unrelenting fire She warmed beneath his gaze But shuddered at his fierce intensity And when he left her at the end of day,

Her proud head drooped in weariness

Moon found her so, and cooled her fevered body With a kindly touch He told her of the queen that she was meant to be And begged to cover her with silver bells, Then stand aloof and watch her beauty's radiance.

The Sycamore sighed restlessly, "But life was meant for living, Moon Someday, somehow, my song will bring my rightful love."

Then in the dull dawn, clouds lowered

The hurry of rain filled the hours

Until a strange new music rumbled in the distance As heaven met earth in one gray sob of sound...

A triumphant voice called in answer to the siren's song, As impetuous Water swept down upon the proud one.

His passion swirled about her and drowned her own singing, He wooed her completely... brought her trembling to her knees Then as suddenly as he had come, he was torn sharply from her.

She threw herself upon the wet sand And cried out to him her longing The desert wash is dry now as breathless dry as time The years have left the Sycamore an humbled strength And love has given her a quietude in which to sing again, A yellow-leafed song of far off rushing Water..

She sings as though listening for a wild remembered voice

By

Lorraine Babbitt FREDERIC JAMES, a native Kansas Citian, is one of America's finest water colorists. His works are housed in numerous museums and are collected avidly. In addition to three New York one-man shows, Mr. James has shown in countless solo exhibitions across the country as well as in many national and regional exhibitions. Painting is his full time profession. Water color particularly appeals to James because of its immediate and spontaneous characteristics. A critic once described Frederic James as a “great portraitist of nature.” Indeed it is his object in his work to present to the viewers of his paintings much of the beauty and innate spiritual qualities of nature. These qualities are interpreted in a sensitive and personal manner.

“THE WHITE SYCAMORE” by Frederic James is one of the most admired pictures in the collection of the Nelson Art Gallery. In addition, it was chosen by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to be included in its exhibition: “250 years of American Water Color Painting.”

“THE WHITE SYCAMORE” - Frederic James 20" x 251/2"

“The original watercolor was painted on site in early spring, 1969. Locale: South of Patagonia, Arizona, on the road to the ghost town of Mowry near Saddleback Mountain, a few miles from the Mexican border. The tree is an “Arizona Sycamore (Platanus wrightii). I painted the tree sitting at its base looking up into the branches. I drove to the tree every morning for a week, from Circle Z Ranch where I was staying, and spent two hours painting in the same light. I can only say about the experience that I feel that I have an intimate friend in Arizona to whom I wish to return some day.”