The smooth-leaved elm is of less sprawling habit than the wych elm, but occasionally it takes advantage of space to spread out of all measure. Of this there is an example at Sharpham, near Totnes, where a tree of this species has covered the space of a quarter of an acre, some of its side branches being 104 feet long. The total height was between 80 and 90 feet in 1906, in which year it was figured in the _Gardeners' Chronicle_ as a wych elm. Mr. Elwes, however, pronounces it to be of the smooth-leaved kind. On the other hand, the Cornish elm, which is a variety of _U. nitens_, is usually of columnar habit. The Sycamore and other Maples "Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane, East wind and frost are safely gone; While zephyr mild and balmy rain The summer comes serenely on." A north countryman, reading Clough's beautiful lines, is pretty sure to apply them to the wrong tree, because, when a Scots forester speaks of a plane tree, he is understood to mean what in the south is called a sycamore. But even that is a misnomer, the true sycamore, mentioned in Holy Writ, being a fig-tree (_Ficus sycamorus_). [Illustration: SYCAMORE (_Acer pseudo-platanus_) IN SUMMER] The sycamore and the plane are quite distinct, belonging to separate natural orders, the sycamore being a maple (_Aceraceæ_), the largest of all the maples, and the plane constituting a single group in the order _Platanaceæ_. The confusion of names has arisen from the success with which the sycamore masquerades as a plane, imitating its foliage and aping it in its habit of shedding the bark in thin flakes. Botanists have given recognition to this peculiarity by the scientific title they have conferred on the sycamore, viz. _Acer pseudo-platanus_, or the false plane. But in its flower and fruit the sycamore cannot disguise its true affinity. Its flowers are arranged in triplets on long hanging scapes, of a yellowish green, only requiring a dash of brighter hue to render the sycamore one of the loveliest objects in the spring woodland. The flowers are followed by fruits which stamp the tree unmistakably as a maple. The seed-vessels are composed of what in botany are termed _samaræ_ or keys, each containing a large seed or two. These samaræ are attached to each other in pairs, and, as each carries a beautifully-formed membranous wing, the result is a pair of wings to each pair of seed-vessels, securing wide distribution of the seeds by autumnal winds. On the other hand, the flowers of the true plane (_Platanus_) are very minute, and the fruit consists of a mass of thin seeds set among closely-pressed hairs and bristles, forming a hard, perfectly round ball nearly an inch in diameter. These balls, from two to six on each fruiting stalk, hang conspicuously on the branches all winter, until the dry March winds burst them and allow the seeds to float away.