Some trees to find with opposite buds

If I don't get my daily dose of sunlight at this time of year I start losing the will to live. So I went out for a walk on Sunday morning and combined it with some twig collecting - I was pleased by the number it was possible to find in a short period of time. Granted I do live in the countryside, so the ones I found were all British species and legitimate for your collection. I urge that if you're a beginner you start somewhere you'll find native species - hedgerows and woods. If you start in a park or garden, you'll immediately confuse yourself with exotic and cultivated plants that won't be in the book. And then you'll feel unnecessarily despondent.

There are still some leaves clinging onto the trees at the moment, and obviously these provide great confirmation of the species. But you will find that some common trees have very distinctive buds.

Aesculus hippocastanum (Horse chestnut)

You may recognise this from your childhood conker-collecting: the Horse chestnut (Aesculus hipposcastanum). It's more 'naturalised' than native, having only been brought to Britain in the last 500 years, but it will be fine in your collection. The buds are huge and very sticky and pretty unmistakable. They can be so sticky, they'll make a mess of your bag and your coat and everything they come into contact with. But less sticky when its cold perhaps. Perhaps the resin puts things off from nibbling them.

Horse chestnut belongs to the Order Sapindales and the Family Sapindaceae, so of the other trees in the British countryside, it's most closely related to the Field maple (Acer campestre) and the Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus). Hint: you could put those next to it in your collection.

Sycamore (top) and Field maple (below)

You'll notice all three species have buds which are opposite each other. This is less common than species with the buds sprouting alternately or spirally up the stem. Sycamore buds are noticeably green, and field maple buds are a bit fluffy at the edges.

Another really obvious one you'll soon learn is Ash (Fraxinus excelsor) with its black buds. They remind me of little pointy hooves... devilish little black hooves. But even without such imagination you can't mistake them - they're the only ones this distinctive colour.

Ash (Fraxinus excelsor)

Ash is another species with opposite buds. But it belongs to a completely different Family, and indeed a completely different Order: the Oleaceae in the Lamiales. There are related plants that might be found growing in Britain (olive, jasmine, lilac, privet) but none are native trees.

I found four more opposite-budded species:

click the photo to admire the twigs in close-up (and check out the lenticels)

You'll notice that their colours are quite different. If you decide on this group for your collection, I think it'll really open your eyes to the variation of the plants around you. At the moment it's probably quite easy to think 'oh, trees... I know what a tree looks like', but you might end up wondering if you'd had your eyes closed.

There's Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea - sanguinea = blood) at the top, with red stems that really show up on these dark days, and weird long fingery (antlery?) buds.

Next is Guelder-rose (Viburnum opulus) with rather bulbous shiny buds, and an angled stem. You are bound to see its bright red berries at the moment too.

Third down is one of my favourites, Spindle (Euonymus europaeus) with its distinctive green stem. It has the weirdest fruits which are a clashing pink coating around four bright orange seeds.

At the bottom is Elder (Sambucus nigra) which has scruffy tiny leaves instead of scaled buds. The twig has lots of lenticels. In the days when children left the house and before they became inextricably glued to smartphones, they would annoy people by hollowing out these stems and making peashooters. You might recognise its Latin name: today's Sambuca isn't made from elderberries, but there was obviously a liqueur that once was.

Elder and Guelder-rose are both in the family Adoxaceae (curiously, like the lovely ancient woodland indicator Moschatel) but Dogwood and Spindle are both quite unrelated to anything else you'd find in Britain (including each other).

So that's eight species already. I've got as many specimens again, but they have alternate buds. I'll do those in a different post.