The French plane tree is not a sycamore and is not native to France.

I heard that the "French plane trees" in Shanghai, Nanjing and other places have turned yellow recently. The autumn and winter sunshine shines through the golden leaves, which are particularly warm. When the wind blows, the golden leaves rustle, composing a song for you to walk under the tree.

However, the name "Plantain Tree" is a big misunderstanding, it is not the plane tree from France!

My memory of the Chinese plane tree began in the mid-1990s. At that time, there was a row of four-story-high trees next to the street park near my home. In the summer, the trees were densely shaded. Children would always find "forest peppers" (larvae of the family of caterpillars) on the leaves. They would pick these leaves and use them as "biological weapons" to fight with children from the nearby community. To this day, the Shura-like scene is still vivid in my mind. War is hell!

This "Falonia" is not that "Falonia"

The two-ball plane tree is the offspring of the cross between the single-ball plane tree and the three-ball plane tree. From the scientific name, this family seems to be easy to distinguish, but their common names may be more confusing than the Shura field. If you are not careful, you may fall into the tongue twister of "the cross between the French plane tree and the American plane tree produces the French plane tree".

The two sycamore trees transformed into human forms and chatted together.

A Mu: You know, you and I have three balls in total!

B Wood: Hippocrates bless you, poor child! I can't imagine you don't have a single ball!

Q: What are A and B? Where is the chat location?

The Platanaceae family is a single genus with only about 10 species, most of which are native to North America. There are only two species in Eurasia, one of which is the parent of the Platanus orientalis, the Platanus orientalis.

The leaves of the Platanus triloba are more finely lobed and the number of infructescences is not always 3, but between 3 and 6 | barchampro.co.uk

The plane tree is native to the Balkan Peninsula and Central Asia. It was a common garden tree in ancient Greece. It is said that when Hippocrates, the father of medicine, taught medical knowledge to his students under the shade of a huge plane tree when he was teaching in Cos. Today, the descendants of this tree have taken root in medical schools around the world and are known as the "Hippocrates Tree".

Through trade, the three-ball plane tree spread to the east and the west. The branch to the east flourished in India and was introduced sporadically to northwestern China. At that time, the Chinese called it the "Pure Land Tree" or the "Sweat-Removing Tree". There was also a rumor that it was the "Foot Sweat Tree". The branch to the west reached Spain and was introduced to Britain around the mid-16th century.

The legendary "Hippocrates Tree" has now been developed into a tourist attraction | Steven Fruitsmaak / wikimedia.org

If you use Baidu to search for "French plane tree", the entry will show that its Chinese name is "three-ball plane tree", but three-ball plane tree is not the most common French plane tree in China. So why do two species have the same name?

In fact, the so-called French plane tree refers to the Platanus chinensis, which was first introduced to China from France and cultivated in the French Concession in Shanghai, hence the name "French plane tree". However, the botanical community in the Republic of China mistakenly identified the Platanus chinensis as the Platanus trilobus. In the 1937 "Chinese Tree Taxonomy", the author also confused the two, calling the Platanus trilobus the French plane tree and the Platanus chinensis the English plane tree. Although the identification error was later corrected, the name was not corrected in time, which caused confusion between the scientific name and the common name.

Therefore, the two “Ponghua trees” in the tongue twister are not the same.

The other parent, the American tung, is not so confusing. It is indeed native to North America. Because it usually only produces one fruit ball, the Flora of China calls it Platanus occidentalis. (There is a hint about the question and answer at the beginning of the article: this is a region full of Platanus occidentalis.)

The leaves of the sycamore tree are more shallowly lobed, and the infructescence is usually 1, and rarely 2 | selectree.calpoly.edu

Silently dedicated street trees

When the two parental plane trees met, a happy hybrid occurred. There are different opinions about the location and method of hybridization. Most people believe that the two were artificially hybridized by the British in the 17th century. Another theory is that the hybridization occurred in Spain at the same time. A three-ball tree and a one-ball tree were planted close together, and finally they successfully joined hands and produced natural hybrid offspring.

In any case, the equation "(3+1)÷2=2" holds true (wrong), and the great plane tree was born. Scottish botanist William Aiton mentioned the plane tree in his 1789 book Hortus Kewensis (Plants of Kew Gardens), which was the first time it officially appeared in botanical literature. However, it was considered a variant of the three-ball plane tree and was called the "Spanish plane tree." This seems to prove from the side that the earliest hybrid offspring appeared in Spain.

William Aiton and Plants of Kew | Left: wikimedia.org; Right: booktopia.com.au

In 1805, the two-ball plane tree was proposed as a new species and named Platanus acerifolia. Later, an x ​​was added in the middle as a "suspected hybrid", and thus the scientific name Platanus x acerifolia was obtained. It can be seen that until the early 19th century, the mainstream academic community could not confirm its hybrid identity. So, could it be that the British made up the claim that artificial hybridization took place in the 17th century?

Although hybridization may not have been achieved by the British, it is a fact that the two-ball plane tree was first planted on a large scale in the UK. People found that it is more resistant to heat, drought and fungal anthrax than the other two plane trees. It also has a fast growth rate, beautiful tree shape, large crown and dense shade, making it very suitable for urban roadside trees and park greening trees. Moreover, its leaves can absorb stagnant pollutant particles in the air, which is very suitable for the smoky British cities during the Industrial Revolution. Today, its English name is the famous "London plane", and the "Spanish plane tree" has long been forgotten.

Writer Zhang Xiaofeng once wrote an essay titled "Street Trees", praising the selfless dedication of street trees | Chris Hellier / thespruce.com

In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom celebrated her 50th anniversary of accession to the throne. The British Tree Commission specially selected 50 old trees with historical and cultural significance in the United Kingdom and cut them down to give to the Queen as a tribute to the Queen. Among them was a two-ball plane tree from Ely, Cambridgeshire. It is considered to be the first two-ball plane tree in the UK and was planted by British Bishop Peter Gunning in 1680.

The UK's No.1 plane tree in Ely, with a circumference of over 9 meters | treetree.co.uk

This "Wutong" is not the real "Wutong"

In the mid-19th century, Napoleon III came to power and appointed Baron Georges Haussmann as the chief architect to rebuild the urban planning of Paris. Under Baron Haussmann's design, the main roads in Paris were planted with plane trees for the first time, becoming a romantic boulevard where pedestrians can stroll leisurely. Since then, major cities around the world have taken Paris as a model and planted plane trees as street trees on the main roads of cities.

The earliest Chinese plane trees also came from France, with a small amount imported in the mid-to-late 19th century. For example, there is a 27-meter-high Chinese plane tree in Nanjing Shigu Road Primary School, which was planted by a French priest when the church was built. It is called Nanjing's "001 Plane Tree".

From 1887 to 1892, the Shanghai French Concession Municipal Council purchased two sycamore and eucalyptus seedlings from France for trial planting. The growth of sycamore was much better than that of eucalyptus, so the Municipal Council gave up eucalyptus and continued to purchase sycamore in batches from France. By the end of the 19th century, Shanghai had become self-sufficient in sycamore and no longer needed to buy more. The trees were also introduced to surrounding cities such as Wuhan and Nanjing. Today, there are more than 50 sycamore trees over 100 years old still alive in several parks in Shanghai.

Plane trees on the streets of Nanjing | archive.aawsat.com

Since the Qing Dynasty, most items entering China by sea had to have the word "foreign" added to them. Therefore, when the plane tree was first introduced, it was commonly called "foreign plane tree" because its leaves were similar to those of the Chinese native plane tree Firmiana simplex (belonging to the Malvaceae family). In writing, its Japanese name "篠懸の木" (篠懸の木) is often used. There is also a direct transliteration of the genus name, called "Platana".

The real Firmiana simplex is a completely different tree species from the Platanus acerifolia | Javier martin / wikimedia.org

According to the Qing Bai Lei Chao, "Xiaoxuan wood is a deciduous tree native to Europe and transplanted to Shanghai. The trees that line the roadsides are of this type, commonly known as 'foreign sycamores.'"

It is unclear when the name "French plane tree" replaced the foreign plane tree and became the common name for the two-ball plane tree in Shanghai. An article in Shenbao in 1928 said:

When people plant trees along the road, they often want to pick Platanus orienlais, but few people know the name of Platanus orienlais. Because there are so many of them planted in the French Concession, and their leaves are very similar to those of the plane tree, people have no idea what to call it, so they call it the French plane tree. Actually, it belongs to the Platanaceae family, not the Sterculia family, and it is not a French specialty.

Although this article got the scientific name wrong, it has clearly pointed out the botanical difference between the plane tree and the sycamore. The name "French plane tree" is a misnomer based on the unknown origin and the confusion of appearance. Later, Chinese botanist Mr. Zhong Guanguang changed it to "Plane Tree", which is actually derived from another spelling of the Japanese plane tree "Suzukakenoki". However, whether it is plane tree, suzukakenoki or shinokakenoki, they are not as frequently used as the misnomer "French plane tree" that has been passed down to this day. The latter has appeared many times in some contemporary novels, symbolizing romance, melancholy, decadence, coldness, loneliness, exhaustion, looking up at the sky, bowing your head and crying, dim clouds, dusk, etc.

Annoying "April Snow"

As mentioned above, the sycamore has the advantages of fast growth, dense shade, good resistance, pruning resistance, and smoke resistance. It is one of the world's five major street trees and is widely planted in the northern hemisphere. However, there is no perfect street tree in the world. In spring and summer, people will encounter "April snow" - in addition to the all-round attack of poplar and willow catkins, the sycamore also takes this opportunity to spread its offspring to the world.

The difference is that the fluff of willow comes from seeds, while the fluff of sycamore comes from nutlets - 600 to 1400 inverted cone-shaped nutlets form a spherical fruit cluster. Between April and June, the mature fruit clusters of the previous year fall off, and the nutlets also float around with the fluff.

Spring's "pedestrian killers" | newenglandwild.org

Usually, these hair fluffs carry pollen, bacteria, viruses, pollutant particles, etc., which can penetrate into people's eyes, ears, mouths and noses, causing serious discomfort and even inducing asthma. Piles of hair fluff can also increase the risk of fire, which is very annoying.

The most direct and laborious way to deal with this problem of sycamore is to prune, cutting off branches with fruits or branches of the current year. A more advanced method is to breed fruitless varieties and then graft them onto fruit-bearing varieties, but this has not yet been widely promoted. Another method is to spray ripening agents during flowering to make the flowers and young fruits shrink and fall off.

In addition to triggering allergic asthma, the fluff flying into the eyes causes discomfort and also poses a traffic safety hazard to pedestrians | weimeixi.com

The committee that selected the trees for the Queen's coronation ceremony once said that old trees are carriers of history. I think every country has such old trees - from the Hippocrates tree in ancient Greece to the sycamore in Nanjing. No matter how old they are, they silently carry and record the history of a city or even a country, from the darkness of history to the glorious rebirth. The roots of the trees are deeply rooted in the earth, and the trunks and branches are washed by the long river of time, leaving behind the stories of time.