Sycamore Leaf Identification: Leaf, Bark, Look-Alikes

Sycamore leaf identification comes down to one large, maple-shaped leaf that is attached differently from a maple. Virginia Tech's factsheet for American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) describes the leaf as simple and alternate, palmately veined, 4 to 8 inches wide, broadly ovate with three to five shallow lobes and coarsely toothed edges. Davey Tree adds that the undersides are fuzzy.

The decisive check takes two seconds: pull a leaf off. In sycamore the swollen base of the leaf stalk forms a hollow cap that completely encloses next year's bud, and the leaf scar circles the bud. No maple does this. Wikipedia describes the same feature for the whole plane-tree genus.

• Bark. Thin and mottled brown, green, tan and white, flaking off in irregular patches; older lower trunks turn gray-brown and scaly (Virginia Tech). The University of Florida's tree tour calls it camouflage-patterned bark with a creamy white, green and tan trunk underneath.
• Fruit. A spherical ball of many small seeds on a 3 to 6 inch stalk, usually a single ball per stalk. The seeds mature in November and the balls hang on through winter, which Virginia Tech compares to Christmas ornaments.
• Twigs. Stout, orange-brown and zigzag, with no terminal bud.
• Form. A very large tree with heavy, spreading branches. Davey gives 75 to 100 feet with a 50 to 70 foot spread; the UF page records a campus tree 84 feet tall. It grows along streams, floodplains and other moist ground.

"Sycamore" names two unrelated trees. In North America it means Platanus, the plane-tree family. In Britain and Ireland it usually means Acer pseudoplatanus, a maple sold in the US as sycamore maple. Wikipedia explains that pseudoplatanus means "false plane tree" because its leaves and bark look like a plane's.

The two separate cleanly:

• Leaf attachment - Platanus leaves are alternate; Acer leaves are opposite, in pairs.
• Fruit - Platanus has round seed balls; Acer pseudoplatanus has paired winged samaras held at right angles.
• Bud - hidden under the leaf stalk in Platanus; visible in the leaf axil in Acer.

So, are sycamores and maples in the same family? American sycamore is not: it is in Platanaceae, while maples are in Sapindaceae. The European "sycamore" is a maple. See our maple leaf identification page for true maples.

• London plane. A hybrid of American sycamore and the Mediterranean oriental plane (Wikipedia), planted along city streets. Davey notes its bark is similar but in cream and brown tones. American sycamore usually carries a single seed ball per stalk (Virginia Tech), while Wikipedia notes oriental plane, one parent of London plane, has 3 to 6 heads per cluster, so several balls on one stalk point away from American sycamore.
• California and Arizona sycamores. Western Platanus species that Virginia Tech lists as look-alikes; Davey gives 40 to 100 feet for California sycamore and up to 80 feet for Arizona sycamore.
• Eastern cottonwood. Also a big streamside tree with pale young bark, but its leaves are triangular, 3 to 6 inches long, unlobed with rounded teeth and a flattened stalk, and mature bark is gray with thick ridges and deep furrows (Virginia Tech).
• American beech. Pale smooth bark can look similar from a distance, but beech bark is smooth silver-gray all over and does not peel, leaves are simple, unlobed and 6 to 12 cm long, and the buds are long and cigar-like (Wikipedia).

• Size. Virginia Tech calls it a very massive tree; the UF page gives trunk diameters up to 120 inches and a life expectancy of 50 to over 200 years.
• The moon tree. A seed flew around the moon on Apollo 14 in 1971 with astronaut Stuart Roosa, and the UF campus sycamore was planted in 1977 to mark it (University of Florida).
• Wildlife. Finches, goldfinches, chickadees and juncos eat the seeds, and hollow trunks give cavity-nesting birds shelter (UF).
• Wood. Historically used for furniture, interior trim, boxes, pulpwood and fuelwood (UF). The USDA Wood Handbook gives side hardness of 770 lbf at 12% moisture and places sycamore heartwood in the slightly or nonresistant decay group, so it belongs indoors. Our sycamore wood page shows what the lumber looks like.

WoodLens identifies sycamore from a leaf, the mottled bark or a cut board.