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:

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.