Urban Tree Oracle: Sycamore
Tree: Sycamore
Aspect: witnessing
Season: summer
Sense: movement
Score for Sycamore
Become a human gnomon from dawn to dusk
On Wednesday April 23, 2025, on the highest floor of a building called the tower, we gathered with Sycamore. The campus is surrounded by more than 30 Plane Trees (street trees and park trees), which was shared through a handdrawn map for participants to take with them. We drank Sycamore leaf tea to imbue ourselves with Sycamore and participated in a brief movement based score aligning our bodies with the rotations of the earth, celestial bodies, hydrological cycles, and more.
Sycamore is a powerful ally and guide in the practice of witnessing. Together with willow we moved in witness to the moment and this time. Then we drew our responses on the oracle card templates with ink I made from the shed bark of a Sycamore.
Sycamore
platanus occidentalis (Sycamore)
Platanus orientalist (Eastern)
Platanus x acerfolia (London)
Excerpt:
Sycamore and their family have been found on nearly every continent on earth and have been around for over 100 million years. Sycamore of the US are quite common in their native range stretching from Vermont to Georgia to Texas to Iowa. They grow quickly in their first 20 years and then they live for a very long time, up to 500-600 years, becoming ancient guardian trees of our landscapes. Plane tree fossil leaves have been found in the fossil record of the last age of dinosaurs, 100 million years ago, 10s of millions of yers older than many of the familiar trees of our eastern forstest: maples, eels, oaks, and ashes. They have stood as witness on the earth long before humans appeared, watching patiently all that happens during their lives.
