Tree identification

[pandora206]

We have some lovely trees along our road which I have been trying to identify. They have oak-like leaves (I think sinuate is the correct term), pink blossom in spring and orange berries in autumn. Does anyone know what they are please?

Cotoneaster

I don't think it's Cotoneaster as the leaves are similar to oak. I'll see if I can take a closer photo.

Close up

Wild service tree?

It does look a bit like a Wild Service Tree Choccyp1g but slightly different in leaf form. The tree is one of a row planted out about 30 years ago as part of the local landscaping scheme so not a natural species. The trees on the other side are all Rowan.

PlantNet app says Sorbus (whitebeam)

Thanks UniversalTruth. I think that might be it! I'd never had worked it out without your help.

No problem, I recommend the app, it's really useful!

Plant apps are working purely by matching pictures in the same way as you or I looking through google for a similar pic. They don't have any botanical knowledge, so although they can get the right answer, they can also get the wrong answer, and be very wrong indeed. So you should treat their answers in the same way as you'd treat your own. Once you've found a pic that looks similar to what you have, you would google the name given, find out a bit more about it, see whether it made sense - for example does the plant live in the country you live in, is it actually a tree or is it a creeper or a ground plant.. You need to do the same with a plant app.

A bit of research on whitebeam trees shows that ours are Swedish Whitebeam. They are really lovely trees. I'm delighted to have discovered the variety as I've been wondering for quite a while.

Whitebeams are really difficult. They're "apomictic" - which means they have dispensed with cross-pollination, so every offspring is a clone of its parent ... except when you get a very rare hybridisation event. The hybrid is then "fixed" in the population through non-sexual reproduction so gives rise to a new micro-species. As a result there a dozens of species of whitebeam, some of them represented by only a few trees.

Another group which does this is dandelions with over 230 species in the UK.

That's really interesting MereDint 😊

Yes really interesting. I don't think I'd heard of whitebeams before. Apparently it is possible to make jelly with the berries.

230 species of dandelion !
I think my lawn has every one of them.

I think that's where the dandelions got it badly wrong . If they had settled on one species, that was really hard to grow we would all be encouraging them in our gardens and saying how pretty they are, which they are, instead they went down the common , invasive micro species route and we all hate them.

Bit like the Kardashians I suppose.

Ha ha ha about the K's viques but I don't hate dandelions and their relatives because the insects etc. love them.

Though it's very true that familiarity breeds contempt, I have invasive scuttelleria plants and by god they get on my nerves, saying that I just saw a bird eating their berries\seeds so I forgive them!

viques but imagine if dandelions were constantly mutating, they'd have evolved into a giant version and taken over the whole world by now, instead of just my garden.

Is it worth you applying to be recognised as the keeper of the National Collection of Dandelions? You never know, you might get a visit from Gardeners World........

But viques, they're not trying to be popular! They don't have to be, they're too successful being the bullies of the plant world and stealing the smaller plants' lunch money (or in this case access to nutrients and light).

As to being Holder of the National Collection of Taraxacum officinale (agg) - you'd have to put some real effort in. The species found in a garden are normally from sections Ruderalia and Hamata - the other 6 sections have much more restricted habitats. And learning to identify the species is reckoned to take about 5 years hard work. If interested there is an introduction here which contains links to more detailed introductions, which in turn contain references to the definitive works.

I recommend scanning the introduction and looking at what some of the key characters are - it makes dandelion weeding a whole lot more interesting if you're noticing the leaf shape, the colour of the midrib, the backs of the outer"petals", the shape of the green bits round the inflorescence ...