Page 1 of 1

[ID] Street tree

Posted: March 11th, 2021, 10:00 pm
by 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?

Re: [ID] Street tree

Posted: March 11th, 2021, 10:28 pm
by Keep Calm and Ramify
maybe silver birch
800px-Illustration_Betula_pendula0.jpg

Re: [ID] Street tree

Posted: March 11th, 2021, 10:35 pm
by KIRKY
Leaves look more like a Alder
Cheers
Kirky

Re: [ID] Street tree

Posted: March 12th, 2021, 12:10 am
by 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.

Re: [ID] Street tree

Posted: March 12th, 2021, 6:25 am
by Keels
Joshua wrote: March 12th, 2021, 12:10 am 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