Japanese maple or sycamore?

Both are maples with paired keys.

The quickest check

The quickest check is the leaf edge. Japanese maple: fine sharp teeth all round every lobe. Sycamore: coarse teeth, blunt and rounded at the tip. No leaves on the tree? Check the wings of a pair.

At a glance

Look at	Japanese maple	Sycamore
Leaf edge	Fine sharp teeth all round every lobe	Coarse teeth, blunt and rounded at the tip
Wings of a pair	Wide apart, curving into an arch	In a V, at a right angle or narrower
Whole tree	A low dome, 6 to 10 m, often wider	A huge heavy dome, to 38 m

Three ways to tell them apart

Leaf edgeLeaves

Japanese maple: leaf edge — Japanese mapleFine sharp teeth all round every lobe

Sycamore: leaf edge — SycamoreCoarse teeth, blunt and rounded at the tip

Wings of a pairKeys

Japanese maple: wings of a pair — Japanese mapleWide apart, curving into an arch

Sycamore: wings of a pair — SycamoreIn a V, at a right angle or narrower

Whole treeShape

Yoshihiro Tokue, CC BY 4.0

Japanese mapleA low dome, 6 to 10 m, often wider

SycamoreA huge heavy dome, to 38 m

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

Japanese maple

Acer palmatum

Japanese maple is a small, rounded tree, often wider than it is tall. Its leaves are cut deeply into five or seven pointed lobes, each with fine, sharp teeth.

How to identify Japanese 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

Japanese maple or elder?Quickest check: the leaflets

Japanese maple or Norway maple?Quickest check: the leaf edge

Sycamore or common ash?Quickest check: the whole leaf

Sycamore or field maple?Quickest check: the lobes and their teeth

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

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: Yoshihiro Tokue (CC BY 4.0), pete_gateley (CC0), Marco Mussita (CC BY 4.0), steve_mcwilliam (CC0), João D'Andretta (CC BY 4.0), Yves Bas (CC BY 4.0). With thanks to everyone who shares their photographs on iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons.