Sycamore

Also called: great maple, acer pseudoplatanus

Sycamore is the English name for the great maple, Acer pseudoplatanus, a pale hardwood grown across Europe. In America the same word names an entirely different tree, a kind of plane, and the two literatures on the subject have been colliding ever since.

One name, two trees

The confusion is old. The English name 'sycamore' was reassigned in the sixteenth century from its original tree to the great maple: as one Edwardian trade writer put it, "In the sixteenth century the name was transferred in English use to the Great Maple (Acer Pseudo-platanus), a totally different, but shady, tree from the same region." European sycamore is also known as great maple, and, in Scotland, simply as plane, along with assorted names in other languages; in Scotland and northern England generally it has long been called plane or plane-tree rather than sycamore. Cross the Atlantic and the names swap round entirely. The tree Americans call sycamore is Platanus occidentalis, a true plane unrelated to the maple family, and in England that same tree is instead called 'American plane'. Jones's 1920 account catches the reversal neatly: "It is known as Plane in Scotland, whilst in New England the Plane (Platanus occidentalis) is called Sycamore." Wood from the European London plane tree, a relative of the American one, closely resembles American sycamore's wood, which only adds to the tangle for anyone trying to identify a sample by name alone.

Grain and colour

European sycamore is a diffuse-porous wood, meaning its pores are scattered evenly through each growth ring rather than bunched at the start of it, with a band of denser, late-season growth at the outer edge of each ring and knobby rays where the rays meet a ring boundary. Its rays, the strips of tissue running across the grain, can run up to about fourteen cells wide. The heartwood starts out pale, creamy or yellowish, and darkens with age to a light golden-brown. It kiln-dries well, though it can develop staining if it is not stacked correctly while drying.

Uses

European sycamore has long been classed among the trade's regular hardwoods, alongside oak, teak, mahogany and walnut. Figured sycamore, where the grain shows a rippled or patterned figure, has traditionally been cut for violin backs. It has also gone into furniture, pianos and harps, fine Tunbridge-ware turnery, a Victorian decorative inlay craft, wooden screws, presses and dairy equipment. American sycamore serves a more utilitarian range: lumber, veneer, railway ties, barrel-making, fence posts and fuelwood.