April - young Hornbeam leaves

The hornbeam leaves are exploding out of their buds at the moment!

As the leaves of the hornbeam unfurl a lovely lime green, you can see the long silvery hairs along the ridges of the upper surface and along the toothed serrations of the margin and the deep undulations of the leaf surface seen in the youngest leaves in particular. 

Last year's twig is running from right to left, just ending in a gap between the leaves, and it is the scales from the terminal bud that you can see to the far left, and the new young side shoot from inside a side bud that you can see wiggling from left to right, with the lovely maroon colour just developing as it is exposed to light or air. 

This is a closeup showing how that young shoot in the side bud is extending outwards:

and here is a close-up, of the terminal bud again extending even further out, with the beautiful maroon of the young shoot, and again intermittent scales persisting between the new leaves:

April - Unfolding alder leaves

April - Blackthorn

The blackthorns are now leafing out well, some showing some flower, but I think we have missed the stunning early display of flower on the leafless bushes that we usually see in early spring.

It may be that it is the weather last summer/autumn (leading to a failing of the flower bud to form properly?) that is most responsible for this, rather than the long drawing out of winter that we have seen this spring, but I haven't seen anything in the magazines about this. I might ask the Woodland Trust whether they know.

The neat serrations on the margin of the leaf are present from an early stage in development and become very clear at this quarter size or so, as the leaves unfold. The surface is quite shiny as well!

April - Grey Willow

I think these are the female catkins of the Grey Willow or Lesser Sallow, Salix cinerea ssp. oleifolia. This plant could also be the hybrid with Goat Willow or Greater Sallow, Salix x reichardtii.

Identification of sallows is very difficult - and the books don't seem entirely consistent. Generally I tend to think that if the shoots and bud scales are fuzzily hairy, then it is more likely that I am looking at one of the two subspecies of Salix cinerea. I'll try to come back to some marked trees throughout the year to try to get an overall picture of the plants concerned.

Up until today there has been not much sign of reddish tinges to any of the male catkins I've seen, but today I think I could just convince myself of this on some of the younger catkins just as the stamens start to extend. Actually this is a feature only mentioned in CTW (Clapham, Tutin and Warburg), and not in any of the other guides I have, not even the larger CTM (Clapham Tutin and Moore, 1985).

April - Horse Chestnut

This particular Horse-Chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastaneum) is a small to medium sized one along footpath 135, the Access Trail.

There are quite a few others in the parish. There is another small one along School Lane, but the best tree by far is by the entrance to the Parish Council Car Park. The large buds of all the trees are currently trying to burst out of their sticky casings, and the sticky scales are just starting to move apart:

April - English Elm

Some of the elm buds seem to be swelling - assuming it is not a Big Bud Mite that I know nothing about!

Notice the bristly hairy stem, and the purple-red buds, slightly "fringed" at the tips:

In the next two pictures you can see one new fresh green leaf in each bud just starting to escape from their respective overlying bud scales, in each case fairly low down on the bud:

In this picture of a rapidly opening bud, you can see two buds at the same node - not opposite I don't think, just at the one leaf scar:

I'm pretty sure this is the so-called English Elm, or as known from Wikipedia, the Atinian Elm: "Ulmus procera Salisb., now known as Ulmus minor var. procera or var. vulgaris, the English, Common, or more lately Atinian, Elm was, before the advent of Dutch elm disease, one of the largest and fastest-growing deciduous trees in Europe. A survey of genetic diversity in Spain, Italy and the UK revealed that the English Elms are genetically identical, clones of a single tree, the Atinian Elm once widely used for training vines, and brought to the British Isles by Romans for the purpose of supporting and training vines. Thus, despite its name, the origin of the tree is widely believed to be from Italy, although it is possible it hailed from what is now Turkey, where it is still used in the cultivation of raisins."