The London Plane: New York City’s Most Loved and Hated Tree
In my community garden, there are a small number of thundering trees: London Plane trees (Platanus x acerifolia).
And if you live in New York, you no doubt recognize these trees. It has the peeling bark and a mottled camouflage color like a smoothed-out toad that might remind you of your favorite NYC park or boulevard.
According to a 2015 tree census by the Parks Department, they’re 13% of the city’s trees.
It’s a hybrid tree, a cross between the American sycamore and the Oriental plane tree.
At first, I assumed that the London plane was a friend. After all, in the garden, they…
- Provide much-needed shade in our garden
- Sequester carbon
- Absorb rainwater
- Provide food for pollinators in the spring
- Provide dry leaves for our community compost in the fall.
But one day, a gardener visiting the space told me that they weren’t so beneficial. Since it’s not native to the northeast, and not even a tree you would’ve even found anywhere, insects and birds are adapted to it.
So in this article, I’m going to give the case for and against one of NYC’s most common trees.
The Origins of a Hybrid Survivor
The London plane tree is a tree of mixed parentage. It has the toughness of the American sycamore, which endures harsh winters, and the pollution tolerance of its European cousin, which has watched centuries of soot drift through the air of cities like London.
In London, during the time of industrialization, the city planted lots of London planes because these ideas, that it was both tough and helped keep soot out of the air.
These ideas were borrowed by New York, in particular by a very powerful (and today extremely unpopular) bureaucrat named Robert Moses.
Moses is famous for bulldozing neighborhoods to build highways like the Cross Bronx.
He’s less famous for, but was equally impactful in what trees got planted near his parkways, boulevards, and in many of New York City’s parks.
In those parks and around his new boulevards, Moses planted countless London plane trees.
Just when you thought that jackass couldn’t have even more influence over the course of New York City history, he helped decide what kind of trees we’d look at for the next century.
From the Bronx River Parkway to Queens Boulevard, the London plane became the street tree of modern New York.
And like many of Moses’s projects, it was a triumph of engineering and a failure of imagination: a tree chosen not for its ecological value, but for its ability to survive the mess we made.
The Case For the London Plane
There’s a reason the London plane turned up in my community garden and across New York City: in many ways, it has been the urban tree that could. Critiques aside, you can’t deny that it has survived for decades.
Resilience in harsh conditions, Long Life Span
On streets where soil is compacted, cars idle and belch exhaust, salt is flung in winter, and heat waves buckle asphalt, some trees struggle or die. But the London plane’s hybrid lineage gives it a mix of native robustness and tolerance. According to the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, it was a favorite of Robert Moses for that very reason.
Shade and cooling from a Wide Canopy
This tree gets big. Its canopy spreads wide and high, offering shade that makes summer streets less brutal and more walkable. Especially due to the urban heat island effect, this helps people cool off in the summer.
Air and climate benefits
One study found that planes and other trees in London remove thousands of tons of fine particulate pollution annually.
Another study on trees and carbon sequestration in New York, found that planting the London plane was “the most cost-effective species because of its long life span and large canopy.”
The Case Against the London Plane
Still, as I hinted at, there are lots of critiques of the London plane tree as a tree for urban environments like New York.
Low biodiversity value
Because the London plane is a non-native hybrid, it doesn’t support the full fauna community of native trees. Native oaks, maples, birches host hundreds of insect species, which in turn feed birds, which feed the broader ecosystem. The plane falls short in that ecosystem-service dimension. Shade and carbon are great, but what about birds, insects, native webs of life?
The argument is simple: we can do better with native trees.
Monoculture problem
When one tree type makes up a large portion of the canopy, you create vulnerability. Diseases, pests, and climate shifts find easy targets. Plant ecologists in London warn that the very success of the London plane has made it a systemic risk.
Infrastructure conflicts
You’ve probably seen London plane’s roots cracking sidewalks.
This is the flip side of one of its strengths: that it gets big and grows fast.
The Bigger Question: Where Do We Go From Here?
So we have a paradox. On one hand, the London plane helped build a resilient urban canopy when few alternatives seemed available.
On the other hand, its legacy brings ecological fragility and missed opportunities for biodiversity. The question becomes: what comes next?
I only have my own experience to go off of for this, but I know that people at New York’s Urban Forest Plan want to plant more of a variety of trees and focus on native trees.
Just as we’ve moved away from expanding highways through cities, we’ve moved away from a monoculture of trees.
The answer I think is simple: leave our current London plane trees and let them continue to do their job. But moving forward, let’s plant native trees.
If we aim to build cities that restore natural ecosystems and exist within them, not just host green elements, it’s time to stop planting more London planes.
