Norway maple or Sycamore maple: how to tell them apart?
Norway maple and Sycamore maple look alike and are often mixed up. Here is how to tell them apart, feature by feature, with their photos and the details to look for.
⚡ The quick answer
Norway maple
Acer platanoides
Sycamore maple
Acer pseudoplatanus
Breaking the petiole of Norway maple reveals a milky white sap, absent in sycamore — a good clue, to be combined with others: in Norway maple, the lobes are generally less deeply cut and the samara wings are almost horizontal; in sycamore, the underside of the leaves is often hairier and the samara wings form a more acute angle.
🍃 Leaves
Large opposite leaves with 5 lobes, generally 10 to 20 cm, with broad, shallowly cut lobes; the sinuses between the lobes are often fairly open.
Large opposite leaves with 5 lobes, often 10 to 25 cm, with the underside more or less hairy depending on the individual; the sinuses between the lobes are generally deeper than in Norway maple.
🌸 Flowers
Erect corymbs, bright yellow, very visible before the leaves appear
Yellowish-green pendent racemes
🍎 Fruits
Samaras with almost horizontal, widely spread wings
Samaras with very widely spread wings, almost at a right angle
🪵 Bark
Dark grey, finely cracked, never flaking
Grey, flaking off in irregular plates with age
📏 Size
20 to 30 m tall
20 to 30 m tall, sometimes more
🗺️ Habitat
Lowland forests, often planted in towns
Cool forests, often in the mountains
⚠️ Toxicity
No known toxicity
Seeds and young shoots rich in hypoglycin A, toxic to horses (atypical myopathy); no known risk to humans from mere contact
🔎 And from the Sycamore maple side
Breaking the petiole of Norway maple reveals a milky white sap, absent in sycamore — a good clue, to be combined with others: in sycamore, the lobes are often more deeply cut than in Norway maple and the samara wings generally form a more acute angle. No single criterion is absolute: use several characters together.
🌿 Go further
Want to practise spotting these details on real photos? Floraneo offers profiles and quizzes for dozens of look-alike species.
ℹ️ Educational profile — do not use it to judge whether a plant is edible or safe.