But nothing strikes me as so mystically beautiful as an Arizona sycamore. Standing 40 or 50 feet tall, with trunks as thick as a washing machine, the bleach-white sycamores are larger than any of their neighbors in the canyon bottoms. Cottonwoods may grow taller, but the crown of a sycamore radiates around the trunk, giving it a grandeur you don't see in other trees. Thick white branches arch as far out as the tree is tall, sometimes at seemingly impossible angles. They look more like giant marble arms than sinuous branches.
Sycamores seem almost out of place next to the smaller junipers and mesquites.
Which, in a sense is true. According to Janice Bowers' Shrubs and Trees of the Southwest Deserts , several million years ago sycamores blanketed Arizona's hillsides in a vast deciduous forest. As the climate became drier, the mild-climate trees couldn't find refuge in the high, cold altitudes as did the Douglas Firs. So here they are, the last vestiges of a once-proud empire. One of the best places for grand sycamores is the north fork of Horrell Creek, in the Superstition Mountains.