The silver birch is a striking medium-sized deciduous tree, typically reaching 15-25m tall and a crown of arched branches with drooping branchlets. The bark is white, often with black diamond-shaped marks or larger patches, particularly at the base. The flowers are wind-pollinated catkins, produced before the leaves in early spring which, after pollination change colour to a dark crimson. Silver birch provides food and habitat for more than 300 insect species. Woodpeckers and other hole-nesting birds often nest in the trunk, while the seeds are eaten by siskins, greenfinches and redpolls.

Malus Sylvestris

Mature trees grow to around 10m in height and can live for 100 years. They have an irregular, rounded shape and a wide spreading canopy. With greyish brown, flecked bark, trees can become quite gnarled and twisted especially in exposed areas and the twigs often develop spines. This ‘crabbed’ appearance may have influenced its common name, ‘crab apple’.

The brown, pointed leaf buds form on short stalks and have downy hair on their tips, followed by glossy, oval leaves which grow to a length of 6cm and have rounded teeth along the edges. In Spring, the sweetly scented blossom provides an important source of early pollen and nectar and attracts bees and other insects. The flowers develops into small, yellow/green apple-like fruits which are eaten by birds and small mammals.

Downy birch is a deciduous broad-leaf tree native to the UK and northern Europe and northern Asia.

Mature trees can reach 30m in height, forming a light canopy with elegant, drooping branches. Trees are more upright than silver birches and the bark is browner in colour with more obvious horizontal grooves. The leaves are triangular in shape but more rounded at the base than silver birch leaves and the leaf stalks are downy, as opposed to hairless on silver birch.

Downy birch is monoecious, meaning both male and female flowers (catkins) are found on the same tree, from April to May. Male catkins are long and yellow-brown in colour, and hang in groups of two to four at the tips of shoots, like lambs’ tails. Female catkins are smaller, short, bright green and erect. After successful pollination (by wind), female catkins thicken and change colour to a dark crimson. Masses of tiny seeds are borne in autumn, which are dispersed by wind.

Prunus Avium

Prunus Avium, more commonly known as Wild Cherry Tree, is a mid-sized ornamental tree, prized for its profusion of stunning spring blossom and good autumn colour. Long-lived and highly decorative, this cherry tree is a great candidate for a specimen tree.
Often confused with Prunus Avium Plena, which is the double-flowering variety, this cultivar is as dazzling as its close relative. In mid-spring, the crown of this showy tree is enveloped by rounded clusters pure white blossoms. The plethora of 5-petalled flowers stays on the tree for several weeks, offering interest and attracting pollinators. The clusters of delicate flowers are followed by fruit, reddish-yellow and rounded, turning to deep, dark shades of red as it ripens. Although edible, the Wild Chery Tree fruits are not as sweet and palatable as the cultivated varieties of Prunus Avium, but they are favoured by birds and small wildlife. In the autumn, the broad, oval, serrated leaves turn from green to brilliant shades of red and orange.

Rowan is also known as mountain ash and is native to the UK and northern and western Europe.  It is commonly found in the wild, particularly in the highlands of Scotland, but it is also widely planted as a street or garden tree.  Mature trees can grow to 15m and can live for up to 200 years. The bark is smooth and silvery grey, and leaf buds are purple and hairy. Leaves are pinnate (like a feather), comprising five to eight pairs of leaflets, plus one ‘terminal’ leaflet at the end.  Each leaflet is long, oval and toothed. Rowan flowers are borne in dense clusters, each one bearing five creamy white petals. After successful pollination by insects, they develop into scarlet fruits. The seeds are dispersed by birds.

The leaves are eaten by caterpillars of a number of moths, including the larger Welsh wave and autumn green carpet. Caterpillars of the apple fruit moth feed on the berries.

Flowers provide pollen and nectar for bees and other pollinating insects, while the berries are a rich source of autumn food for birds, especially the blackbird, mistle thrush, redstart, redwing, song thrush, fieldfare and waxwing.

Hazel is a deciduous broad-leaf tree native to the UK. Hazel is often coppiced, but when left to grow, trees can reach a height of 12m, where it can live for up to 80 years (if coppiced, hazel can live for several hundred years). It has a smooth, grey-brown, bark, which peels with age, and bendy, hairy stems. Leaf buds are oval, blunt and hairy, and the leaves are round to oval, doubly toothed, hairy and pointed at the tip. Leaves turn yellow before falling in autumn.

The yellow male catkins appear before the leaves and hang in clusters, from mid-February. Female flowers are tiny and bud-like with red styles. Once pollinated by wind, the female flowers develop into oval fruits, which hang in groups of one to four. They mature into a nut with a woody shell surrounded by a cup of leafy bracts (modified leaves).

Hazel leaves provide food for the caterpillars of many moths, including the large emerald, small white wave, barred umber and nut-tree tussock.  Hazel has long been associated with the dormouse. Not only are hazel nuts used by dormice to fatten up for hibernation, but in spring the leaves are a good source of caterpillars, which dormice also eat. Hazel nuts are also eaten by woodpeckers, nuthatches, tits, wood pigeons, jays and a number of small mammals. Hazel flowers provide early pollen as a food for bees. The trunks are often covered in mosses, liverworts and lichens, and the fiery milkcap fungi grows in the soil beneath.