Botany Photo of the Day

I thought I'd follow up yesterday's Arbutus menziesii with another tree species I am anxious to spend more time photographing. These photographs were taken in late March.

Platanus wrightii, or Arizona sycamore, is one of ten species in the genus Platanus; in turn, Platanus is the only genus in the family Platanaceae. The genus Platanus has an odd biogeographical distribution: 1 species found in Vietnam and Laos, another in southeast Europe and southwest Asia, and the remainder in eastern North America, southwest USA and Mexico. The centre of diversity for the species is certainly Mexico, where six of the ten species occur. It reminds me of the distribution of Styracaceae, though more restricted in scope and entirely absent in South America – I'll follow-up with a post about the Styracaceae in a later BPotD.

You might notice in the landscape photograph that the trees are found at the base of the rocky hillsides. More specifically, they are typically found along watercourses which would perhaps be better illustrated with an aerial photograph (I didn't have a spare airplane, though).

The second photograph is an attempt to demonstrate what I consider the ghostly nature of these trees. I like to imagine I'll be able to spend a few weeks sometime making more attempts.

By the way, if you're interested in a close-up of the bark, you can visit this “stumper” I posted on the UBC discussion forums (What is a stumper?).