It produces a hard-wearing, creamy-white close-grained timber that is used for making musical instruments, furniture, joinery, wood flooring and kitchen utensils.

[12] The sycamore is a large, broad-leaved deciduous tree that reaches 20–35 m (66–115 ft) tall at maturity, the branches forming a broad, domed crown.

The leaves are opposite, large, 10 to 25 cm (4 to 10 in) long and broad, palmate with 5 pointed lobes that are coarsely toothed or serrated.

The leaf stalk or petiole is 5 to 15 cm (2 to 6 in) long, is often tinged red[13][15][16] with no stipules or leaf-like structures at the base.

[18] Sycamore trees are very variable across their wide range and have strategies to prevent self-pollination, which is undesirable because it limits the genetic variation of the progeny and may depress their vigour.

Intersectional hybrids with A. griseum (Acer section Trifoliata) are also known, in which the basal lobes of the leaf are reduced in size, making the leaves appear almost three-lobed (trifoliate).

Its natural range includes Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, southern Russia, Spain, Switzerland, East Thrace and the former Yugoslavia.

[27][28]: 76 The lack of old native names for it has been used to demonstrate its absence in Britain before introduction in around 1487, but this is challenged by the presence of an old Scottish Gaelic name for the tree, fior chrann which suggests a longer presence in Scotland at least as far back as the Gaelic settlement at Dál Riata in the late 6th and early 7th centuries.

These include the United States, Canada, Australia (Victoria and Tasmania), Chile and New Zealand,[4][32] Patagonia[25] and the laurel forests of Madeira and the Azores.

[33]: 74  At the time of its introduction it was probably not appreciated that its prolific production of seeds might one day cause a problem to the landscape as it spread and out-competed native species.

By the early part of the 21st century, it was naturalised in fourteen states (Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.), and in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario.

[40] It readily invades disturbed habitats such as forest plantations, abandoned farmland and brownfield land, railway lines and roadsides verges, hedgerows, native and semi-natural woodland.

As an introduced, invasive species, it may degrade the laurel forest in Madeira and Portugal and is a potential threat to the rare endemic Madeiran orchid, Dactylorhiza foliosa.

The roots of the sycamore form highly specific beneficial mycorrhizal associations with the fungus Glomus hoi, which promotes phosphorus uptake from the soil.

[5] The horse-chestnut leaf miner (Cameraria ohridella) occasionally lays its eggs on the sycamore, although 70% of the larvae do not survive beyond the second instar.

The flowers produce copious amounts of nectar and pollen and are attractive to bees and other insects, and the seeds are eaten by small mammals such as voles and birds.

[5] As an introduced plant, in Britain the sycamore has a relatively small associated insect fauna of about 15 species,[43] but it does have a larger range of leafhoppers than does the native field maple.

[48]: 179  Another mite, Aceria pseudoplatani causes a 'sycamore felt gall' on the underside of leaves of both sycamore and Norway maple (Acer platanoides).

[53] Sycamore leaf spot, caused by the fungus Cristulariella depraedans, results in pale blotches on leaves which later dry up and fall.

[54] Horses eating seeds or emergent seedlings of A. pseudoplatanus can suffer from an often fatal condition of atypical myopathy.

[57][58]: 92  This variety is notable for the bright salmon-pink colour of the young foliage and is the only sycamore cultivar to have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

[60]: 439 Sycamores make new growth from the stump or roots if cut down and can therefore be coppiced to produce poles and other types of small timber.

Its coppice stools grow comparatively rapidly, reaching as much as 1.3 metres (4 ft 3 in) in length in the first year after initial harvesting.

[67] Whistles can be made from straight twigs when the rising sap allows the bark to be separated,[68] and these, and sycamore branches, are used in customs associated with early May in Cornwall.

[69] Both male and female flowers produce abundant nectar, which makes a fragrant, delicately flavoured and pale-coloured honey.

[76] An ancient sycamore (sometimes described as a "plane") with distinctive yellow foliage formerly stood in the village of Corstorphine, now a suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland.

[77] The tree was blown down in a storm on Boxing Day 1998, but a replacement, grown from a cutting, now stands in the churchyard of Corstorphine Kirk.

[81] Saint Fintan founded a monastery at Clonenagh in County Laois, Ireland, in the sixth century and it had a spring beside it.

In the nineteenth century, a Protestant land owner, annoyed at people visiting the site, filled the well in, whereupon the water started to flow into the hollow interior of a sycamore tree on the other side of the road.

The tree was a few hundred years old[dubious – discuss] and once stood with others, but they had been removed over time, possibly to improve sightlines or for gamekeeping purposes.