Acer opalus

Italian maple is in the soapberry or Sapindaceae family and is a species of maple native to the hills and mountains of southern and western Europe, from Italy to Spain and north to southern Germany, and also in northwest Africa in Morocco and Algeria. It is a medium-sized tree growing to up to 20 m tall with a broad, rounded crown.

• Bark is gray and pinkish, peeling in small, square plates.
• Leaves are opposite, simple, palmate, glossy green, 7–13 cm long and 5–16 cm across, 5-lobed with blunt teeth, lobes short, very rounded and blunt; petiole is yellow; fall colour is yellow.
• Italian maple trees with very shallowly lobed leaves are sometimes separated as a distinct subspecies, Bosnian maple (A. opalus subsp. obtusatum).
• Flowers are numerous, in short, hanging clusters [umbles], opening before the leaves appear in spring.
• Fruit is a pair of winged samaras each seed up to 1 cm in diameter, with the wing being 2.5–3 cm long, blunt head, wings brown, held at slightly more than a right angle; they mature in mid- summer.