Platanus

A massive native deciduous canopy tree of eastern North American floodplain forests producing distinctive mottled white-tan-gray exfoliating bark (the design-defining trait — sycamore bark looks like military camouflage), large palmate maple-like leaves, and persistent spherical seed balls. Among the largest deciduous trees in eastern North America — old-growth specimens exceed 150 feet tall + 10 feet trunk diameter. Site only where massive scale is acceptable.

A very large deciduous shade and street tree of garden/urban origin — a hybrid of American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) and Oriental plane (Platanus orientalis), also written Platanus x hispanica — reaching roughly 70-100 feet with a crown that starts pyramidal and broadens to open and spreading. Its design signature is the bark: a mottled, exfoliating, camouflage patchwork of cream, olive, and gray that flakes away in plates to reveal a smooth pale underlayer, lit up dramatically in winter. It carries large maple-like palmate leaves and hanging spherical seed balls (usually borne in twos or threes on a stalk, a small field difference from the single balls of American sycamore). It is famous as the classic big-city street tree because it shrugs off pollution, compacted soil, root confinement, drought, and hard pollarding better than almost any other large tree — but it is genuinely huge and is the wrong tree for a small lot.