April - Hazel

The hazel (Corylus avellana) buds are swelling rapidly just prior to proper opening. They are now large enough to "fill" the platforms they are sitting on. The silky haired leaves are creeping out from between the bud scales. Notice how, as the bud scales move apart, they expose their previously hidden apple-green basal sections, below the tan-brown uppers:

This bud is from the same plant, but in a terminal position on a different shoot. Not an aphid egg there by any chance? The expanding leaf looks even silkier from this angle:

and another. The young leaves always seem to be slightly asymmetric from the bud scale they are protruding from:

and yet another. In all these examples there do not seem to be any silky leaves underneath the basal two or three scales of the bud.

This seems to chime with quite an old book by Sir John Lubbock published about 1899 by Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, London, called "On buds and stipules" that refers to bud-scales as stipules "the first four pairs are without leaves. The fifth have a well-formed leaf. The second pair and following stipules are fringed with fine hairs around the edge."

The book goes on to say: "the stem and petioles have two kinds of hairs: 1. fine, silky, white and more or less adpressed and 2. reddish, upright glandular hairs.

The young shoot bends over downwards for protection from the cold. The leaves are conduplicate, The stipules are often beautifully pink. "

March - Oak

March - Ash

The terminal buds of Ash are shaped a bit like French bishops hats, but the lateral buds are almost globular, and often a lot smaller. Here you can see how the stems flatten below out the nodes, easy both to see and to feel, and fairly characteristic of ash.

Here is a good view of some lichens on the smooth bark of a young Ash trunk. You can also see the interesting branch junction with repeated concentric rings - again is it a dying sub-canopy branch in the process of being sealed off?

This is a close-up of the lichens. There are two or three types here, one with creamy white surface and cream craters, the other with a slightly more greeny-white surface, and small black pustular outgrowths. The ora\nge-red staining in the top left might be third type.

Ash is a particularly base-rich (alkaline) bark, and this is quite suitable for lichens. The possible reduction of ash in the country due to the new Chalara disease may therefore well lead to an extinction or near-extinction of quite a few species of rare lichen. Going back to these the lichen to the top left and bottom right might be Lecanora confusa (L.) Vain, and the one to the top right and bottom left could perhaps be Lecidella elaeochrome (Ach.) M. Choisy f. elaeochroma. 

March - Goat Willow

The Goat willow or Greater Sallow is a tree of wet woodland. hedges and perhaps watercourses, with which grey willow is also associated. It was, with hazel, traditionally used for wattle and daub in timber framed houses (Rackham), at least throughout East Anglia, probably further afield. It probably grew vigorously after coppicing, again together with hazel, so both may have achieved sufficient size to become useful "poles" for the wattle.

Here are some small Sallow buds just breaking out of their close fitting single (or rather, perhaps,  united?) outer bud scales:

The large Sallow by the kink in the track to Knight's Park is always worth a look for insects and other wildlife, but its also an interesting tree in its own right. Largely because of its stout twigs, I think it must be Salix caprea ssp. caprea, but the other option is the at-least-equally-common Salix cinerea ssp. oleifolia, or a hybrid between the two species. In theory I think that the twigs of the latter should be redder. I won't be able to be sure until I've gone through more of the annual cycle, and seen the leaves in particular. At the moment its catkins (male I think) are just trying to emerge.

The outer scales that the catkins are in tend to be red or brown, and the stem tends to be a contrasting green, relatively hairless, at least in the situations that I have seen so far. The other buds, which do not contain the catkins I imagine, tend to much smaller, green and adpressed quite closely to the stem:

Others, commonly on the stems above the catkin filled ones, might just be unfilled:

The bark is incredibly complex. Here is a young trunk, with the bark apparently just starting to break up into vertical strips, or possibly just showing some lenticel-like structures in bands. The greeny grey of the bark may be partly algal of course.

The branch junctions are quite strange - perhaps this smaller shaded branch has died or is now being regarded as as redundant, and has stopped growing itself - this needs checking.

Here is an intermediate stem - you can see I think that the deep cracks in the bark are appearing, following the lines of the lenticel-like features if that is what they are. The warm slightly pink colour is still clearly visible but I don't know if this is a general characterisatic of Sallow.

Here is a close-up of one of the older main stems. The bark is now riven by earthquake-like fissures, running deep with orange-reddish hints to the depths of the cracks, contrasting with the grey-green of the woody bark, and the slightly warm pinky brown of the remaining outer surface in which you can still see the lenticel-like structures seen in the picture of the younger bark above. Presumably respiration might now take place to some extent at the depths of the cracks

Here is a tree along the gravelled drive to the house in the wood. Again I think it must clearly be a Sallow, because of the breaking up of the surface bark into its corky canyons, the pinkish tinge to the remaining surface bark, and the remaining patterns of diamond shaped lenticel-like structures, seen most clearly on the younger stems behind:

March - Grey Willow

Sallows, or Goat (Salix caprea) and Grey (Salix cinerea) Willows, may have been some of the first trees to invade the British Isles following the end of the last glaciation between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, together with birch and alder. Both species are certainly well known as natives from consistent pollen evidence before the beginning of the Atlantic Period, about 6,200 years ago (Rackham).

This willow found by the Medway near East Peckham has a very furry (shortly pubescent, CTW) stem, as I would hope from Salix cinerea, but its bud scales are still relatively hairless and broadly coracle-shaped, as in the trees I have been calling S. caprea ssp caprea. The idea of a pubescent twig is fairly well spread throughout the literature but is most explicitly stated to be for the duration of the first year by the Collins Tree Guide. There are also more obvious black-tipped lower scales near the bottom of the catkin, as mentioned in CTW characteristically found in this subsection of the genus. However I wonder if in fact it is a hybrid between the two species, as I would hope, making it Salix x reichardtii or perhaps its just a Salix caprea which is more pubescent in the twig.

In a closer view, you can see the three stubby vein scars in the leaf scar, but no "auricle" scars - if that is what they are.

This below is another tree, and this time the buds as well as the twigs are pubescent. In this case, the buds do look ovoid, as described in CTW, making this tree perhaps much more likely to be pure Salix cinerea. however this looks NOTHING like the illustration in the AIDGAP guide, which I'm going to say is absolutely misleading, also in describing the buds as RED:

Waiting for the catkins to open with anthers, which should be red-tipped when young, its worth noting the grey-black of the top of the silvery catkins as the outer scale falls off. This may be tied up with the black tips of the male catkin scales of Salix cinerea mentioned in Clapham, Tutin and Warburg, 1981. Again however I would call this shoot greenish rather than brown, but this may depend on whether this twig came from a shaded part of the canopy or not.  

March - Crack Willow

Crack Willow (L.) Salix fragilis is found in the area, and there are some trees along the River Medway that appear perhaps to be this species. This one is just to the North side of Lock, by the side of the old footpath. Identified almost solely by the audible click when first year twigs are bent gently so that they snap off the year two branches, it does fit with most characteristics to the book descriptions.

This is a close-up view of the twig junction that will snap if gently twisted back. note the raised bumps possibly indicative of lenticels on the second year bark.:

The next day I went further west along the river, and found more crack willow trees, including this one.  The twigs here seemed yellower. The bud shape never seems particularly characteristic for any particular species.

Another possible feature, if anything the lenticels seem even more raised than in the other tree, again in effect bursting through the thin epidermal bark.

The smaller flat maroon spots might be fungal, perhaps minor infections arising from single spores?

This twig is a bit more olive, with redder buds, possibly a bit more weathered.

Some of these buds are just opening now:

and in close-up:

Here is another bud that has opened a bit further:

Here is the same bud in close-up, showing the two or three narrow silky inner scales more clearly. I was surprised to see the leaves drop out asymetrically from underneath the scale. I wonder how commonly this asymmetry occurs:

A tree I saw on Sherenden Lane by a small water treatment works was surprisingly yellow (and a bit droopy) but clearly "fragile". I wondered whether it could be var decipiens as described in Stace - "var decipiens  (Hoffm.) W.D.J. Koch is .. male in the BI with unbranched catkins and shiny pale yellowish-brown twigs, glabrous even when young." decipiens means trapping, catching or cheating so that isn't much help, but anyway most of the written descriptions tend to point away from my tree.

Mitchell refers to the tree as having somewhat pendulous leaves on long spreading branches with upswept shoots, and a dark green glossy upperside to the leaves. 

March - Cricket-bat Willow

March - Hornbeam

The buds of the Hornbeam, Carpinus betulae, L., are just breaking now. Here is a fairly straight bud lying next to the stem, showing the typical red tips and yellowy-greener bases of the well ordered bud scales on the long-ovoid bud just next to the stem. 

The lenticels, if that is what the white spots are, seem to lie absolutely flat on the surface of the stem, which in this case at least are a lovely sunburned maroony red. The sparse longer hairs are scattered occasionally about on the twig: 

Here is another bud, slightly less advanced. Again the bud seems very straight. In the trees at the front of the college, the buds seem to sweep in forming a distinct curve, bringing the bud curving across the top of, or underneath the twig.

This next picture is of a different tree, which I think must also be a Hornbeam, if it isn't a Beech, but with a stem more out in the open of the ride. The bud seems to be hairier, the twig horizontal and much longer and thinner, and the leaf scar is also much smaller. This might tie in with the increased exposure of the buds, but being a long lateral trying to get into the light.

Next is a young Hornbeam stem, showing the smooth but sinewy bark. In many trees the sinews are very obvious, and the tree looks as though it has knotted tissues under the bark - described in the Collins Tree Guide as "heavily muscled" fluting. I think the apparent spirals at this stage are just a bit coincidental.

Here is another stem, quite close by, showing some roughening of the bark:

In older trees the bark may become much rougher, fissured into crusty longitudinal plates, but this takes some time.

March - Hazel

Here are fairly typical male Hazel catkins (lambs tails) on a bush by the roadside on the South side of the River Medway just over the Hartlake bridge. Some bushes have virtually finished flowering now,  but this one still has catkins with the tiny flowers at their peak. 

Here is a Hazel bud, Corylus avellana, of fairly typical shape. Note that the later bud scales are fringed with hairs:

The buds are sometimes slightly pointed but still characteristically hazel, including the slightly fringed scales to the bud.

This bud below is infected with Phytoptus avellanae, the Hazel Big Bud Mite, an Eriophyid mite. The highlights in this picture have been darkened a trifle. On the twig I think you can see the two types of hair found on Hazel shoots and petioles, the bases remaining of the silky silvery hairs, together with the stiffer more bristly, maybe glandular, hairs. The bud still has the silky fringes to the scales characteristic of Hazel. According to Wikipedia, two forms of P. avellanae exist, a gall causer and a vagrant form that has a more complex life-cycle and does not form galls. Umm.

March - Sweet Chestnut

A relatively nice day today, one of the very few this spring so far! I am going to focus a bit on winter buds and bark here, and try to get a reasonable photographic guide to supplement the written and web resources that I have current access to.

So starting off on some sweet chestnut, Castanea sativa L., here is a fairly typical bud on a lateral shoot of a tree. You can see the rounded shape, although it is just about to burst, and the relatively large heart-shaped leaf scar with its surrounding rim, on which the bud sits. The dark red lower scale off to the left isn't very clear from this angle. All the (relatively few) scales seem to be reddish to at least some extent, which fits with the descriptions. The creamy slightly raised lenticels are also quite clear on the slightly scurfy bark of last year's twigs.

Here is the apparently terminal bud from the same twig. The books insist that there are no terminal buds, just laterals with the rest of the shoot aborted, and it does look as though this could be true, with a possible terminal scar just behind the bud:

and here is another lateral, on the other side of the twig. Again the outer lower bud is partly hidden. I have no idea what the item trapped in the angle of the bud and twig is:

On the main trunks or poles the remnants of previous sideshoots remain as small squat almost triangular scars that look rather like cyclops eyes, set above more or less horizontal raised lines or ridges drawn fairly evenly across the trunk. This seems to be very characteristic of trees at this age:

Here is another shot, this time of two different occluded shoots: 

and finally one more. There is a degree of consistency, but some variation in shape of the "eyes" on the general theme: