Tour Detail

The American sycamore is the most massive tree indigenous to eastern North America. It is deciduous and typically grows 75-100 feet tall. It is native to lowland areas, typically reaching its largest size along streams, rivers and floodplains, which is evident in the large number of sycamores surrounding St. Mary’s Lake, St. Joe’s Lake and the St. Joe River. Its brown bark exfoliates in irregular pieces to reveal creamy white inner bark. Mature trees can be identified from great distances as they typically display this mottled white bark. Their flowers also give way to fuzzy, long-stalked, spherical fruiting balls.

Native Americans once hollowed out the trunks of sycamores for dugout canoes. Today, the wood has been used commercially for furniture, cabinets, barrels, crates and butcher blocks. This tree is especially famous on Notre Dame’s campus. Many students have had their pictures taken while seated in its low, spreading branches. It has been referred to as the “Legend Sycamore,” yet the actual legend is a poorly documented story about visits to the tree by an elderly Potawatomi chief. He was visiting the site where, many years earlier, his friend, while fishing on the lake, had been killed by a white man. The sycamore is supposed to have grown where the fisherman fell. The broad, low limbs appear, to some viewers, like an open hand “begging for mercy.”