The name sycamore is applied, confusingly, to at least three unrelated trees. In the Bible and the ancient Near East it is the sycamore fig, Ficus sycomorus, a large spreading fig of Egypt and the Levant; in Britain it is a large maple, Acer pseudoplatanus; and in North America it is a plane tree, Platanus. The most sacred of these is the Egyptian sycamore fig, which was the tree of the goddess Hathor, called the Lady of the Sycamore, and was associated with the sky-goddess Nut: a tree-goddess reaching from its branches to give bread and water to the souls of the dead is a recurring image in Egyptian tomb painting.
The English sycamore, the maple most often meant by the name in Britain, gained a sudden and very modern layer of symbolism in September 2023, when a single celebrated tree growing in a dramatic dip in Hadrian's Wall, known as the Sycamore Gap tree and one of the most photographed trees in the country, was deliberately felled overnight, provoking national grief and two criminal convictions, a startling recent reminder that a tree entirely unrelated botanically to the biblical sycamore fig can still, in its own time and place, become a genuine object of public reverence and mourning.
Sources The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson with Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors