Let's stop planting sycamores in all the wrong places

Please don't get me wrong. I love the magnificent sycamore, Platanus occidentalis, with its huge spreading canopy, leaves the size of dinner plates and trunk growing to 100 feet tall and up to 15 feet around.
A mature sycamore is a ginormous tree, and it belongs where it can spread out - by a river, way out there on the back forty, in a huge meadow. It is native to North America and people love the tree because of its size, its cooling dense shade and beautiful peeling bark.
Its cousin, the hybrid London plane tree, is also enormous, growing to at least 70 feet tall and 80 feet wide. But it is being planted by the thousands - in virtually every neighborhood, along every roadway and in every commercial development in most of Placer and El Dorado counties and a lot of other places, too.
The reason it is so ubiquitous in our county and everyone else's county is that the people who design these projects do not understand how much trouble this tree can cause.
The Internet has many articles on its value as a street tree, but it really is not a good choice for tiny yards, narrow planting strips and microscopic parking lot islands.
Too many are being planted, creating a monoculture - a single, homogeneous culture without diversity. This leads to an increase in diseases and insects as the species weakens.
These trees are susceptible to at least 15 or 20 types of insects and diseases, including powdery mildew, anthracnose, cankers, bacterial leaf scorch, sycamore plant bug, sycamore scale and pacific flathead borers.
A killing disease of London planes, called canker stain, is affecting trees from New York to Georgia and as far west as Missouri. It is spread by pruning, by man and it just might come here someday.
Certain varieties of the plane tree are said to be "resistant" to many fungal diseases, but they are beginning to be affected as well. And of course there are roots that buckle sidewalks, house foundations, streets and driveways; leaves that just turn grocery bag brown in fall - never to decompose - and tons of prickly balls and twig litter.
If that is not enough to convince you, look around at the atrocities that occur when novices and uneducated tree trimmers try to make a big tree fit a small space.
They top them, a death sentence for any tree, and butcher the branches, which results in ugly twiggy growth, decline, and sooner or later, death. There are examples of that right here in Auburn.
So, what else can we plant that will be a beautiful, tough, fast growing shade tree other than London plane? There are many. It's just that designers, landscapers and homeowners get into a rut, perhaps because they are not aware of their options.
However, if you want a big shade tree with brilliant fall color and no pest issues, and you have space to let it grow as it pleases, try a Tupelo, Nyssa sylvatica, or Ginkgo (male variety), or perhaps a black oak, Quercus kelloggii.
A certified arborist can suggest species and designs at the planning stage for every type of yard that will enable you to have a long healthy relationship with the right tree in the right place.
Vicky Bartish is a certified arborist. She can be reached at (916) 663-2872 or e-mail vickyb@foothill.net