Norsey Wood Tree Identification Walk

These are my notes from today's Tree Identification walk.

Ash - one of the trees I recognise, it was covered before I got started

Hazel - one of the trees I recognise, it was covered before I got started

Oak (sessile), acorn has no stork, leaf has a stork. straight trunk
Oak (English) acorn stork, leaf no stalk

Field maple, paired leaves, Ridge branches, palm like leaves oldest at Downham church (St Marys)
Sycamore (maple family) red stork

- black spots{tar spots} fungus
- dormice feed on it honeydew aphids

Sweet chestnut (bought here by the Romans?) alternate leaf

- coppiced - useful timber. Fissures are stretch marks. Pale blotches are lichen.
- pollarding - cutting above ground

Broom prefers acidic soil (in pea family) root nodules fix nitrogen

Gorse (which we didn't see) has spines

Birch heart shaped leaf, uneven teeth, catkin tree males long, female tiny flower

- hermaphrodite
- pioneer tree - quick to colonise

Hawthorn lobed leaf variable - single seeded. 1 stigma

- rose family
- bark platelets flake off

Midland hawthorn (which we didn't see) - ancient woodland - berry is 2 seeded. 2 stigma

Laburnum elder rose

Laburnum wayfaring tree

Blackthorn - spines but less on older trees - sloes

Spindle tree pink flowers, orange berries. Very poisonous. Lichens grow on branches

Elder leaf smell, flowers and fruits - insects & starlings Wart on stem (20ft tall) jelly ear fungus golden yellow

Holly, less spiny as it gets older

Fungus russula, the red is washed out by the rain

Hornbeam dropping branches, similar to beech, rough, serrated, curled, raised pronounced vein. Hairs in axel point veins meet stem, bracts with seeds - finches squirrels, dormice
-bark smooth very dense timber, used for cogs in flour mills

Common Buckthorn food plant for brimstone butterfly
Leaves in small groups

Goat willow    Early sulphur yellow catkins, Fissured trunk with starbursts
Leaves - rough upper, wavy edge, greyish underneath, oval, almost round
brittle twigs

Aspen (poplar) succouring young heart shaped, goes circular
Flattened stalk of leaf - leaf trembles

Cherry (wild) very serrated, leaves in clusters (rosette), gnarly stork, grooved stalk. Black glands near leaf bottom Bark grey rings around trunk

Rowan (mountain ash) 7–8 pairs of serrated leaflets. Flat head of white flowers

Darters dragon fly