London Plane Tree 'Bloodgood' - Picked Up Spring 2020

When I see a good deal on trees, I suppose I just figure our yard can handle a few more.  And that's how we ended up with a new tree in our garage that I'll plant in the next week or so.  It is a London Plane Tree 'Bloodgood'.  Tag below.  Why'd I buy it?  It is a good-sized tree at a good price and it reminds me of Paris.  Paris?!  Yeah...Paris.  Not London.  Where they're from, of course.

Why Paris?  They remind me of our time in Paris because of the stand of them in a section of Luxembourg Gardens that had vines tied between them.   Here's my post about them.   I've posted a lot about Luxembourg Gardens since our visit as the experience has stuck with me - from the chairs to the boxes to the trees to the edging to the mulch.  This post is going into that tag.  

Due to social distancing, we didn't see any family for my birthday this year and a result of that was that Nat's Grampy who lives in Oak Lawn sent me a birthday card with some cash in it.  Pretty nice.  I used that $$$ on this tree.  

Here's the tag of the tree showing Plantanus x acerifiolia as the classification.

According to the Missouri Botanical Garden, the London Planetree is a hybrid between American Sycamore and Oriental Planetree.  And the Chicago Botanic Garden has a page up about the Bloodgood variety that talks about the features of this particular variety.  

From the Chicago Botanic Garden:

Bloodgood planetree, a selection of the tough London planetree that is widely planted in urban areas, is a large shade tree with a broad open crown and bark that exfoliates to reveal patches that may be creamy white, yellow, or olive-colored. The signature ornamental feature of this huge tree is its brown bark, which exfoliates in irregular pieces to reveal creamy white inner bark. 'Bloodgood' has dark green foliage and is reported to have some resistance to the problematic anthracnose disease of sycamores.

The tree that I selected out of the Home Depot parking lot is a pretty tall nursery tree.  Here it is against a wall in our garage.  The plywood behind the tree is an 8' tall piece - so the tree is about 12' tall already. 

I measured the caliper at 1.20" which would put it just behind the front yard Bald Cypress (a much shorter tree).

There are a few spots for this tree to go in both front and back.   The London Planetree is listed on the Village of Downers Grove parkway trees list (and is a Spring planting), so that's a logical spot.  But, I can see it in the backyard, too.  Or, even along our north property line in front?  By the time it gets to its mature height of 50 or 60 feet, we'll be long gone, but future residents in our house/our block will benefit, right?