Species

Acer pseudoplatanus

Etymology

Acer: Thought to be derived from the Latin acer 'hard' or 'sharp', the wood once having been used for writing tablets

Common Name(s)

sycamore

Family

Sapindaceae

Flora Category

Vascular - Exotic

NVS Species Code

ACEPSE

The National Vegetation Survey (NVS) Databank is a physical archive and electronic databank containing records of over 94,000 vegetation survey plots - including data from over 19,000 permanent plots. NVS maintains a standard set of species code abbreviations that correspond to standard scientific plant names from the Ngä Tipu o Aotearoa - New Zealand Plants database.

Structural Class

Dicotyledonous Trees & Shrubs

Habitat

Terrestrial. Coastal and lowland plant on sites with high fertility. Grows in a wide range of open forest and scrub types with moderately high light levels.

Features

Large monoecious, deciduous tree to 20 m high with smooth grey bark. Large 5-lobed leaves up to 20 cm long on slender reddish petioles up to 15 cm long. Small green flowers in dense clusters. Seeds 0.5-1 cm long with distinctive wings up to 4 cm long.

Similar Taxa

A number of exotic maple species are cultivated in NZ. All Acer species have the distinctive winged seeds but the combination of 5-lobed leaves (not compound) and the smooth trunk separate Acer pseudoplatanus from most other species.

Flowering

October, November

Flower Colours

Green

Fruiting

late summer-early autumn (Timmins & MacKenzie 1995).

Year Naturalised

1880

Origin

Central and Southern Europe

Reason For Introduction
Ornamental

Life Cycle Comments
Perennial. Species is deciduous (Porteus 1993; Timmins & MacKenzie 1995). Seeds germinate synchronously in spring; seed dormancy is broken by chilling (5 degrees Celsius for 6 weeks); seed bank is termed "transient" which probably means that the seeds don't last more than a year (Buddenhagen, C. pers. comm.).

Reproduction
reproduces from seed. Plants are monoecious so some selfing may occur.

Seed
Seeds produced annually, in bunches up to 40; probably greater than 10,000 seeds per tree. Seed bank transient.

Dispersal
Seed dispersed by gravity and by wind (up to 100 metres)

Tolerances
Highly tolerant to shade (although growth in the shade is slow) and moderately tolerant to drought. Fairly resistant to frost. Resprouting from stumps occurs after any physical damage.

This page last updated on 6 Aug 2012