Its name of False Plane is due to the Scots calling it the Plane, misled of old by the similarity of the leaves, and the fact that patches of the fine ash-grey bark flake off, as in the true Plane, showing other tints. It grows to a height of sixty or even eighty feet so quickly that it is full-grown when only fifty or sixty years old, though it is supposed to live from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty years. Like that of the Common Maple, the wood of the Sycamore is firm and fine-grained, which does credit to the efforts of the French-polisher. The leaves are more heart-shaped, but cut into five lobes, whose edges are unequally toothed; they are six or eight inches across. The flowers are similar to those of the Common Maple, but larger, and in a long hanging raceme, which has a rather fine appearance. The samaras are scimitar-shaped and red-brown, about an inch and a half long. These are produced freely after the tree is about twenty years old. Like many other Maples, the Sycamore has sap which contains much sugar. Some of this appears also to exude through the leaves, for they are often found to be quite sticky to the touch. The black patches so frequent on Sycamore leaves are the work of a small fungus--_Rhytisma acerinum_. The Norway Maple (_Acer platanoides_) is a tree of much more recent (1683) introduction from the Continent. Its height is from thirty to sixty feet, and its early growth is very rapid. The leaves are even larger than those of Sycamore, of similar shape, but the lobes are only slightly toothed. The clusters of bright yellow flowers are almost erect; the tree does not produce seed until it is between forty and fifty years old. The Maple was the Mapel-treow or Mapulder of the Anglo-Saxons; it was originally the Celtic _mapwl_, and the name indicated those knotty excrescences on the trunk from which the cabinet-maker got the mottled wood that was so highly prized in early times for the making of bowls and table-tops, for which fabulous prices have been paid. [Illustration: _Pl. 48._ Sycamore--winter.] The Poplars (_Populus_). Almost everybody who has an elementary acquaintance with trees knows a Poplar at sight, the foliage being so very distinct from that of other trees. But the distinctions between the several species are not so immediately obvious. Five kinds of Poplar are commonly grown in this country, of which only two are regarded as distinct indigenous species. These are the White Poplar (_Populus alba_), and the Aspen (_P. tremula_). A third indigenous form, the Grey Poplar (_P. canescens_), is thought to be either a sub-species of _P. alba_, or a hybrid between that species and _P. tremula_. Then of common introduced species we have the Black Poplar (_Populus nigra_), and the Lombardy Poplar (_P. fastigiata_). [Illustration: _Pl. 49._ White Poplar, with Catkins--spring.]