Will a sycamore seed fall faster with shorter wing span?

Answer 1

Sycamore seeds do not have wings (see link). Possibly owing to the similarity between the shapes of the leaves, many people have mis-identified maple trees as sycamores and have posted the pictures of maple seeds (which do have wings) claiming them to be sycamore.

Sycamore seeds are very small and form as a compact green ball about the size of a ping-pong ball. As these balls ripen, they turn brown and disintegrate into fluffy masses of seeds. A single seed would resemble a shuttlecock from Badminton with an overall length of maybe 1 cm.

Now, to your question: A single sycamore seed would fall faster if its 'parachute' were smaller because it would have less air resistance. The problem is, you hardly ever see them as a single seed. You see small cotton-like puffs containing hundreds of seeds blowing through the air.

If you progressively trim the wings on a maple seed, you will soon hit a point where the mass of the seed will overcome the optimum angle of attack for the wing and it will simply fall without rotating. Up to that point, by reducing the length of the wing you will be decreasing the wing's air resistance and its rotational inertia. The seed will spin faster and faster as its drop speed increases slightly owing to the decreased lift of the shorter wing and reduced wind resistance.