Garden Notes - Common Maple to Holm Oak

Common Maple
Acer campestre

Sometimes reaches a height of 30-35 feet in a hedgerow or wood, but more frequently a mere hedge bush. Wood: fine-grained and capable of high polish, sometimes beautifully veined; used in cabinet-making. Bark: in young trees deeply fissured and corky, becoming smooth with age. Leaves: five-lobed, about two inches across, brilliant yellow in autumn; leafstalks red. Flowers: in erect clusters, downy, and green in color. Fruit: arranged in pairs, each pair having two wings, ½ in. long, spread horizontally. These turn red and brown as they ripen. The Field maple is the only native British Maple.

Mountain Ash, or Rowan
Pyrus Aucuparia

A relative of the Apple and Pear, and quite unconnected with the Common Ash; under favorable conditions its straight slim trunk attains to a height of 30-50 feet. Bark: smooth, silver-gray, scarred horizontally. Branches: ascending. Leaves: divided into six or eight pairs of slender pointed leaflets, each 1 in. to 2 in. long, with toothed edges, paler beneath, downy when young. Flowers: creamy-white, fragrant, in dense flat-topped clusters 4 in. to 6 in. across. Fruit: miniature scarlet apples, with yellow flesh, about ¼ in. diameter; a favorite food of thrushes and blackbirds.

Black Mulberry
Morus nigra

A slow-growing, sturdy tree, usually not more than 30 feet high, cultivated in this country in gardens and pleasure grounds. Branches: rather low down, lower ones almost horizontal. Bark: rough, reddish-brown. Leaves: seldom appear until May, when all danger from frost is over; egg-shaped, edges toothed. Stamen or pollen-bearing flowers grouped on loose tassel-like catkins, greenish-white; Pistil-bearing flowers sometimes on a different tree, bunched into short spikes, greenish-white. Fruit: about 1 in. long, green at first, turning red and reddish-black, juicy; really a cluster of stalk less stone fruits.

Oak
Quercus Robur

The typical British tree, varies in height from 60-130 feet; in old trees bole sometimes 40-50 feet in girth. Bark: thick, rough, and deeply furrowed. Branches: massive and spreading, springing from trunk almost at right angles; smaller limbs much twisted and interwoven. Leaves: vary in size and shape, much veined, edges divided into irregular rounded lobes; in spring brownish-pink and glossy. Flowers: green and inconspicuous. Fruit: a one seeded acorn resting in a rough cup. The Oak is very subject to attack by gall insects, causing "oak-apples," "crimson spangles," and other galls.

Holm Oak
Quercus Ilex

Not a native British tree. Usually grows 20-30 feet high, and occasionally as much as 60 feet. Bark: dark grayish, thinner and more even than that of British Oak. Trunk: usually divides into massive limbs quite near ground, so that the tree resembles and immense bush in growth. Leaves evergreen and leathery, when mature 2 in. to 4 ½ in. long; lower leaves have toothed edges (hence the name Holm or Holly Oak). Flowers: greenish-yellow, arranged in tassel like catkins. Fruit: brownish acorns, almost entirely enclosed within their cups, narrower and longer than those of the British Oak; do not ripen until second year.