Confusion with “Sycamores”

If you look for “how to identify a sycamore tree” on wikiHow you’ll come across one of those innumerable American English / British English differences constantly under our noses and yet so rarely noticed. To identify a sycamore we are told, we should first check for “small woody balls,” like so

and then, as if that vague, oversimplified drawing weren’t confusing enough, we are also told to look for “helicopter seeds,” like so

A sycamore tree, it seems, has both “small, woody balls” and “helicopter seeds.” Why a tree would need two entirely different ways of dispersing its seeds is inscrutable, but there it is: according to wikiHow, both are ways of identifying a sycamore.

The problem is that wikiHow is talking about two entirely different trees both called “sycamores,” just in different parts of the world. What is called a sycamore in the US, Plantanus Occidentalis, would be called a “plane tree” in the UK. (now that I know what a plane tree is, a good chunk of European literature becomes easier to imagine. Personally, I thought of a plane tree as something flat and short like the trees that are used for road dividers) And what is called a sycamore in the UK, is actually a kind of maple: Acer pseudoplantaus (ie.” Maple pseudo plane tree”) hence the helicopter seed pods.

So there you go, identifying a sycamore isn’t that hard, as long as you know which sycamore you’re talking about.