Identifying winter trees is not just about twigs

Botanist Gerry Firkins, from Sorby Natural History Society, leads regular tours around the city looking at plants and trees, and one of his interests is winter twigs.

“It’s about looking,” he says, by which he means looking very carefully at things you might easily miss. If the twig is still on a tree, where are the growing buds, for example?

A terminal bud on the end of a twig might be a sycamore or horse chestnut, and if the buds running up the side of a twig are opposite each other it might be a maple, ash or elder (or again, a sycamore or horse chestnut). It’s a little complicated, but opens up a whole new world for winter walks.

(Gerry is leading a winter tree ID walk at Sheffield General Cemetery on Sunday January 26, with a £5 donation towards the upkeep of the cemetery. See: https://gencem.org/whats-on/).

Gerry points out one of our more common winter twig arrangements. “Oaks have a fist on the end,” he says, meaning the cluster of terminal buds that look like a bare knuckle boxer’s hand.

But winter tree identification is not just about twigs, it’s about looking in detail at tree shape, the branches, the bark and colour, and in some cases the smell, he adds.

Fir and pine trees often have distinctive scents, for example, but to be sure you need to be prepared with a ruler to measure needle length, and to count the groups of needles.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of a winter tree tour is how you can see signs of the tree preparing for spring, with many showing buds of different colours getting fatter by the week. Some, like hazels, may still have dangling catkins, and in a month or two the nearby hazel buds will sprout a tiny red flower.

Here are a few distinctive features of local winter trees to look out for:

Beech: “I call it the Ballet Tree,” says Gerry. “The fronds of the branches at the top are like the hands of ballet dancers.”

Flowering Cherry: The bark is marked by rings. “Like rubber bands going up the trunk,” says Gerry.

Silver Birch & Downy Birch: The downy birch looks messy, says Gerry, while the bark of the silver birch is white and smooth, while the ends of its branches are more pendulous.

Oaks: Many of our parks have oaks from other countries, like the American red oak, but the leaves have similar lobed shapes, albeit at very different sizes. Of the two native species, the sessile oak has a longer stalk, while the English oak has almost no stalk at all. The holm oak, which has grown here for around 500 years, is evergreen and has a distinctive square-marked bark.

Alder: Italian alders were introduced here around 200 years ago, and have a heart shaped leaf. If they’re still there after the snow, the native English alder might well be identified by its ravaged leaves, eaten away by the alder beetle which had a good year last year.

Western Red Cedar: The word ‘cedar’ means wood that smells, and this (like many trees named cedars) is not actually a member of the cedar family. Worth a close look at the needles, which have a hidden butterfly pattern on the underside.

* Gerry Firkins has published a book on the natural history of Sheffield General Cemetery to raise funds for the site’s upkeep, available from the cemetery gatehouse office on Thurs/Fri mornings, or for £5.99 from the cemetery’s online shop at https://gencem.org/shop/