page_title: Platanus orientalis
section_title: Greece
hierarchical_section_title: Platanus orientalis / Cultural history / Greece
caption_attribution_description: English: Plane tree of Hippocrates in Kos town, Kos island. Español: Árbol de Hipócrates en la ciudad de Cos, Isla de Cos, Grecia.
context_page_description: Platanus orientalis, the Old World sycamore, or Oriental plane, is a large, deciduous tree of the Platanaceae family, growing to 30 m or more, and known for its longevity and spreading crown. In fall its deep green leaves may change to blood red, amber, and yellow.
context_section_description: The Tree of Hippocrates, under which Hippocrates — the "Father of Medicine" — taught at Kos, is reputed to have been an oriental plane. A 500-year-old tree presently there may be on the same site and may have been planted from a succession of cuttings from the original. The Athenian Academy, outside Athens, featured a sacred grove of planes where the students listened to the masters and where among others the Peripatetics practiced philosophy.
  Pliny's Natural History records the westward progress of the plane "introduced among us from a foreign clime for nothing but its shade", planted first at the tomb of Diomedes on the island of Tremiti, then imported to Greek Sicily by Dionysius the Elder (c. 432-367 BC), tyrant of Syracuse. He had plane-trees conveyed to the city of Rhegium (Reggio di Calabria), where they were looked upon as the great marvel of his palace, according to Pliny's sources. From there it spread by the first century CE as far as the lands of the Morini in Belgic Gaul. Regardless of why it may have been introduced, the tree had medicinal uses from early times. Pliny details 25 remedies using preparation from the bark, leaves and excrescences of plane. Pliny prescribes it for burns, bites, stings, frostbite and infections.
  Pliny goes on to describe some legendary plane-trees. There was one on the grounds of the Athenian Academy, he says, that had roots 50 feet (15 m) long. Licinius Mucianus held a banquet for 19 in a hollow plane-tree of Lycia, and the emperor Caligula another for 15 plus servants in a tree house (nest) built in the branches of a plane-tree at Velletri.
  Most small villages in Greece have one or more very old planes in their central square, where the village water spring used to be (water springs are nowadays replaced by water taps from the same spring captured). Many of them are set in cavities, which are often playing and meeting points for children and teenagers, or are cared for, sometimes even illuminated, as tourist attractions.
caption: The "Tree of Hippocrates" in Kos, Greece, possibly a descendant of the original.
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