Field maple

Sycamore

Lookalikes

Field maple or sycamore?

Both are maples with lobed leaves and paired keys.

The quickest check

The quickest check is the lobes and their teeth. Field maple: rounded lobes, a few big blunt teeth. Sycamore: pointed lobes, coarse teeth all round. No leaves on the tree? Check the winter bud.

At a glance

Look at	Field maple	Sycamore
Lobes and their teeth	Rounded lobes, a few big blunt teeth	Pointed lobes, coarse teeth all round
Winter bud	Small, brown and grey-hairy	Big, green and egg-shaped
Angle of a pair	Wings almost flat, in one straight line	Wings in a V, at a right angle or narrower

Three ways to tell them apart

Lobes and their teethLeaves

Field maple: lobes and their teeth — Field mapleRounded lobes, a few big blunt teeth

Sycamore: lobes and their teeth — SycamorePointed lobes, coarse teeth all round

Winter budTwigs and buds

Field mapleSmall, brown and grey-hairy

SycamoreBig, green and egg-shaped

Angle of a pairKeys

Field maple: angle of a pair — Field mapleWings almost flat, in one straight line

Sycamore: angle of a pair — SycamoreWings in a V, at a right angle or narrower

Think you can tell them apart now? Try the tree quiz: real photographs, and what gives each tree away.Take the quiz

The two trees

Field maple

Acer campestre

Field maple is a dense, domed tree, or a clipped shrub in hedges. Its small leaves have rounded lobes, and its paired keys spread almost in a straight line.

How to identify field maple →

Sycamore

Acer pseudoplatanus

Sycamore grows into a huge, heavy dome. Its large leaves have five lobes edged with coarse, blunt teeth, and its paired keys hang with their wings set at a right angle or narrower.

How to identify sycamore →

Their other lookalikes

Field maple or hawthorn?Quickest check: the bare shoot

Field maple or spindle?Quickest check: the outline of a leaf

Field maple or London plane?Quickest check: the leaf and how it sits

Sycamore or common ash?Quickest check: the whole leaf

Sycamore or horse chestnut?Quickest check: the parts of one leaf

Sycamore or Japanese maple?Quickest check: the leaf edge

Sycamore or London plane?Quickest check: how the leaves sit

Sycamore or Norway maple?Quickest check: the leaf edge

In the app

See them side by side in Treely

Both trees, part by partLeaves, bark, buds, flowers and fruit, photographed through the year
Every lookalike side by sideThe checks that settle it, for every pair people mix up
A short round each dayUntil you can tell them apart at a glance
The full GuideBoth trees written up in full, with where to find them

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Every fact on this page is checked against the Collins Tree Guide, last in November 2026. Spotted something that looks wrong in front of a real tree? Tell us. How we check.

Photographs: ubovich (CC0), pete_gateley (CC0), Leon Cross (CC BY 4.0), Kieran Roy Powell (CC BY 4.0), Yves Bas (CC BY 4.0). With thanks to everyone who shares their photographs on iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons.