Landscape Plants

Some 6-7 species of deciduous trees with thin, plate-like, exfoliating bark.  Buds enclosed by the base of the petiole in summer.  Leaves alternate, simple, mostly 5-7 palmately-lobed, pubescent at first, then glabrous and glossy.  Flowers in dense, globose clusters on a long, pendulous stalk, individual male and female flowers are inconspicuous and superficially similar.  Fruit, a 2 mm achene, are packed in a 2-3 cm globose fruit-ball.  Native to North America and southeast Europe and southwest Asia.
Platanus: the Greek name for P. orientalis from platys, broad, a reference to the wide leaves of this tree.