Grandeur of the Sycamore

With its large girth, white bark, and buttonball seedpods the Sycamore has been a beacon along the Ohio Country's rivers and streams. To travlers and searchers of an earlier age the Sycamore was a marker of good moist soil and marked a way to a source of water.

While the soils of Lawrenceville were once lush and fertile, the are no longer. Rocks and waste and useless soil filled the river plain and lowlands to make way for railroad tracks and factories. But the hardy Sycamore still finds enough soil to take root. This tree is located on the rocky bank at 57th Street, behind Allegheny Cold Storage.

At this time the Sycamore with pale bark and its buttonballs stands out among the gray of the other trees.

You can imagine that once a grove of these Sycamores, bigger and wider than this one, grew on these flatlands.

Across the River from there is a lowland area where Sycamore can once again thrive among its other water loving woodland trees such s the River Maple. The area downriver of the mouth of Pine Creek is where sediment from the Creek has collected high enough to allow for a small almost native riparian woodland habitat.

When I return on my hike I will take a closer look.