[ID] Street tree

[Joshua]

I cycle past this on my way to work, and I've been wondering what it is for a while.

It makes these little hanging inflorescences, which if i remember correctly are a bright purple color. In the second image you can see what they became over winter.

The leaves look like they're sort of ribbed and have serrated edges.

Start of spring now so it's just starting to sprout new leaves and flower buds.
They were completely bare through winter.

new_flowers.jpg

New flower buds, I think. They're roughly 10 cm long, and that's a very rough estimation.

leaf_old_flower_fruit.jpg

This shows last years flowers/fruit which were a bright color but turned brown and crispy over winter. They were longer before, looks like half of it has fallen down. Most of them were completely gone.

bark.jpg

Grey brown bark, a little fissured in places.

Didn't get a photo showing the habit, but they're street trees so surely pruned to this simple round shape.

Any ideas?

[Keep Calm and Ramify]

maybe silver birch

800px-Illustration_Betula_pendula0.jpg

[KIRKY]

Leaves look more like a Alder
Cheers
Kirky

[Joshua]

Thanks. Based on this I did a little search and saw that another in the same birch family is hophornbeam , genus Ostrya. That stood out because the fruits did look a bit hoppy. I think that might be it.

Don’t know why I remembered them as being brightly coloured though, they’re clearly not.

[Keels]

Thanks. Based on this I did a little search and saw that another in the same birch family is hophornbeam , genus Ostrya. That stood out because the fruits did look a bit hoppy. I think that might be it.

Don’t know why I remembered them as being brightly coloured though, they’re clearly not.

I use an app called plantnet. It backs up your story.

Ostrya carpinifolia, the European hop-hornbeam