The sycamore tree is a member of the maple family.
Its most distinctive feature, at least to somebody as ignorant of botany as I am, is the ‘helicopter’ seed.
It is not native to Britain and some conservationists try to remove it 1
The word sycamore is actually derived from a different tree altogether – the ‘Ficus Sycomorus’, which is a biblical fig tree with similar shaped leaves 2
