Sandy's Garden ... A Secret Sycamore

Many of the trees date back more than 25 years to their planting by our garden designer. With very few exceptions, I have not actually been removing any of them; rather I have been relieving them of dead branches, of long, straggly shoots and generally trimming them back to allow free movement along garden pathways.

Doesn’t that sound grand, as though we have a large estate through which we ramble on sunny days? Of course, it’s not like that in reality, although by contemporary standards we have a generous amount of ground, large enough to divide into different ‘rooms’, including several ‘rooms’ given over to trees and shrubs.

While I was engaged in this activity, I found what was undoubtedly a branch of a small sycamore tree; and further investigation revealed that it belonged to a healthy sapling about one-and-a-half metres high … say, five feet in old money … growing happily concealed in the foliage of some large, mature shrubs.

I reckon it must be at least two years old and has remained unseen by us, by our gardening guru on her occasional days of intense activity and good advice and by a specialist arboriculturist who, earlier this year, had been commissioned to remove bushes which were unwelcome or had grown overlarge and were definitely past their prime. This was either a secretive sycamore sapling or a lucky lurker!

Now the sapling’s chosen location was categorically not a site where a sycamore tree would have been an appropriate addition to our range of plant species. An eviction notice was immediately served on this squatter and its removal expeditiously executed, for Acer pseudoplatanus … the false (pseudoplatanus) maple tree (Acer) … can grow to a height of 35 metres … that’s more than 100 feet in old money … and our garden simply isn’t large enough to play host to a tree of that magnitude!

The sycamore tree was probably introduced into the United Kingdom from its natural home in Central Europe or Western Asia rather more than 500 years ago, and is now naturalized in much of Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.

You probably won’t be surprised, gentle reader, to be told that it establishes itself readily from seed: but, like me, you may well be surprised to learn, as I did from Wikipedia, that an ancient sycamore formerly stood in Corstorphine, having reputedly been planted there in the 15th century, which would have made it one of the oldest sycamores in Great Britain.

Sadly, this ancient tree was blown down on Boxing Day, 1998: but the churchyard of Corstorphine Kirk is home to a tree grown from a cutting from the original, which boasts the botanical name Acer pseudoplatanus f. corstorphinense … the Corstorphine false maple … for its foliage is a slightly differently colour to that of a bog-standard sycamore. Well, it wouldn’t do it any harm to be rather special in Corstorphine, would it?

It is more than possible that there are items made from sycamore wood in your home, as there are in ours, for sycamore wood is fine-grained, hard and strong and is used in furniture-making, in turnery … objects made on a lathe … and in kitchen utensils like bread boards, bowls and spoons, for the wood doesn’t taint food.

But, as we welcome sycamore wood into our homes, there is a good reason why even a gardener whose garden is large enough to accommodate one or more sycamore trees … think how well its seed grows … may not be too keen on them; they are favourite homes for a variety of aphids, which is good news for aphid-eating birds and insects but less good news for nearby lovingly-tended plants.