Description: Medium sized tree with initially conic, open, lightly branched crown, later broader and less regular, but still open and lightly branched, bole eaning, branches twisting, lower branches level. Often grows as a thicket of suckers from an earlier tree.

Height: to 20 m

Diameter: ? m

Leaves: ovate-orbicular, truncate or broad-cuneate, very short-acuminate, 4-6 × 5-7 cm; with blunt, curved, irregular teeth and slightly crinkled margin; unfold coppery-brown, still tinged in late May, then dull rich or greyish green above, pale grey-green below; petiole very flattened, whitish, 4-6 cm. Autumn colour a good clear yellow late in October. Leaves flutter to show undersides in the lightest of breezes.

Shoots: shiny deep brown. Leaf-bud yellow and deep brown, laterals appressed, narrowly conic; terminal ovoid-conic, 7-10 mm; catkin buds prominent towards the tip of most shoots, ovoid, pointed, chestnut-brown, 1-1.2 cm.

Bark: Greenish-grey, very smooth, wrinkled and lenticelled horizontally; sometimes lenticels are deep pits enlarged by Green Woodpeckers; older trees pale grey or brownish, shallowly ridged at base, but noticeably smooth through crown.

Flowers: Male trees bear profuse, thick grey-brown catkins, yellowish in mid-March when shedding pollen, then dull brown and soon shed. Female trees about as common as males, with green catkins, 4 × 0.5 cm with red-brown bracts and grey hairs, becoming woolly and white in mid-May and shedding the woolly seeds soon after.

Habitat: Frequent on damp sites on hillsides, in rocky valley bottoms, hedges and copse-edges in the UK. A component of lowland woods in the north of its range, but found sporadically or in small groups in mountainous zones up to 1800m further south.

Range: Much of Europe and Asia, but not southern half of Iberian peninsula. Native throughout Britain, locally abundant in N & W Scotland, less frequent in SE England.

This is a short-lived pioneer species, liking the sun in newly-formed forest gaps. When overtopped by slower-growing trees, it dies out. It can spread by suckering, and colonises forest edges in small groups of clones from a single tree.

Information: Mitchell (1988), MacDonald (1984)

Source: Weasdale Nurseries, Newbiggin-on-Lune, Cumbria.

Purchased: Three by us, 1993.03.22 at 5-6 feet.

Planted: 1993.04.03, east side of Euro-strip, near boundary, southern half.

Progress: The sites available for these trees were perhaps a little more shaded than they are happy with, and growth has not been especially rapid. However, all are making some progress, to the extent that overhanging Ash branches have had to be pruned out of their way.

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