On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 15:16:09 +0100, Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:

The garden next door to me has a huge Acer that looks like a Sycamore
with red leaves. There are a lot of seedlings growing in both our
gardens that have normal green leaves. I've not seen any mature
Sycamore trees in the area.

Steve

Depending on your knowledge of maples it may well be a sycamore with red
(purple) leaves, such as A. pseudoplatanus var. purpureum. Or it could
be one of the several red/purple leaved cultivars of Norway maple, which
are more commonly planted. That the seedlings are all green-leaved
suggests to me that it's the sycamore - the Norway maple cultivars
produce (probably not 100% reliably) coloured leaved seedlings, while I
could well believe that var. purpureum doesn't produce purple leaves as
a sapling.


You're right, seedlings of var purpureum are very variable and don't all
have the purple undersides. But the best ones do: a friend brought me a
wild one from Brittany last year, it was only a couple of inches high but
already a lovely dark purple.


--
Gardening in Lower Normandy