One of Europe's showiest native trees, with elegant sharply lobed leaves turning fiery red in autumn and glossy jewel-like winter fruit. It thrives in damp, often winter-wet woodland, including alder and willow carrs, and also in drier sites along tracks, verges, rough grassland and hedgerows, where it is often planted in 'native mix' plantings.
Native across the whole of Europe except Portugal, extending through Siberia to the east, and Turkey and Algeria to the south. Native to Britain and Ireland and widespread, though less frequent in Scotland especially above 400m asl in upland areas.
Monoecious, with hermaphrodite flowers in a compound cyme: an outer ring of large (20mm) sterile flowers attracts pollinators to small (6mm), inconspicuous fertile inner flowers. The fleshy single-seeded drupe ripens only in midwinter, staying attached to the tree, and is dispersed by birds over winter.
Small (4m), bushy, on damp heavy soils, with multiple low sweeping branches that layer where they touch ground, forming dense thickets, with short angular lateral shoots off long main stems. Bark and branches grey-brown or red-brown, wrinkled. Twigs pale green, glabrous, ridged; buds opposite, green-yellow. Autumn colour varies from yellow in shade to dark red-purple in sun. Leaves simple, palmate, opposite (5-10cm), with 3(-5) sharply pointed lobes, irregularly shallow-toothed, fresh green and glabrous above, with strap-like stipules and concave glands near the blade. Flowers in umbel-like compound cymes (6-10cm) with inner yellow-white (4-7mm) and outer showy white (15-20mm) flowers, sickly-sweet, June-July. Fruit a glossy red, translucent subglobose drupe (8-10mm) in clusters of 10 or more, persisting into winter, each with a single unridged seed. Sycamore and Field Maple differ: more than three veins radiating from the leaf base.
Tolerates heavy shade but needs some sun to flower, usually growing on winter-waterlogged soils and prone to summer-drought wilt and shoot dieback. It deserves a place in every new hedgerow. Cultivars include the golden-leaved 'Aureum', yellow-fruited 'Fructu-luteo' and rarely flowering dwarf 'Nanum'.
Its fruit is highly prized by birds, especially Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos), Blackbird (T. merula), Mistle Thrush and Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula), a valuable late-winter food once frost-sweetened (usually left uneaten in autumn). Viburnum Aphids (Aphis viburni) cluster at shoot tips, causing leaf curling and galls in late spring and summer that shelter both the aphids and their attendant ants.
Foliage highly palatable to deer. May suffer during prolonged droughts under a warming climate.
Fruit is mildly poisonous to humans unless cooked. It is a powerful antispasmodic, applied by herbalists in the treatment of asthma and menstrual cramps. Its flexible stems were once put to good use in tying, weaving, skewering and arrow-making.
