Identifying your winter trees

Van Gogh's View of Arles with its wintery willow twigs.

When it comes to identification you'll probably need a hand lens, though it's not always essential. Sometimes it's nice to see your specimens under a dissecting microscope, so you're more than welcome to bring them in to use the ones in OJ17.

There are a lot of tree identification guides out there, but many are of limited use unless the tree is in leaf, though sometimes they will give you a helpful idealised silhouette. You might want to use one in conjunction with specialist winter guides:

The Field Studies Council have produced an excellent booklet called 'A guide to the identification of deciduous broad-leaved trees and shrubs in winter'. We have a few copies you can borrow, and there are some in the library. It's only £6 though to buy, so would not break the bank. It relies mostly on features of the buds (what shape they are, whether they're opposite or alternate, their size, etc.) and has line drawings.

The FSC more recently brought out a photographic guide too, and I have lots of copies of this too. It's a nice companion to the one above, because it can be useful to see the real size and colour of the specimens.

Both use clear dichotomous keys, and you will remember from the Official Guidance for this assignment that you must show fully how you've worked through such a key for at least two of your specimens.

You can also try out this online dichotomous key from SAPS (Science and Plants for Schools) which is similar, but I'm not sure the pictures are quite as clear.

You might recognise the male catkins of hazel - but maybe not this flamboyant (though tiny) female flower? Image by Velela

(Stace's 'New Flora of the British Isles' is the standard key for British vascular plants, and it includes trees. But it won't be much use to you because it requires information about the leaves - which you won't have. So you don't have to worry about its rather fearsome reputation.)

With regards to preservation, there's not much you can do with winter twigs as they are already quite dry - just keep them in a warmish dry place. If you feel you want to, you can press them for a while in a botanical press. This might be particularly useful if you've got extra parts to your specimen like catkins.

Read on for presentation and labelling advice.