Woodland Trust

Nature's CalendarNature Detectives

I have just spotted elder budburst here in Lincolnshire - what have you seen?

WTPL/Katherine Jaitehoak

  • Has acorns and distinctively-shaped leaves
     
  • Male flowers in drooping yellow catkins
     
  • Female flowers in inconspicuous stalked spikes have reddish colour
     

When to look for

  • Flowers and leaves appear April-MayWTPL/Shaun Nixon
     
  • Leaves drop November-December
     
  • Ripe fruit September-October


Events you can record for oak

Quercus robur

  •  This is the classic English or common oakrecord
     
  • The leaves have almost no stalks but the acorns do

Mostly found in mixed woodland, but huge, isolated specimens are also seen in fields, hedgerows and parks. The dominant oak in the lowlands.
 

sessile oakrecord

Quercus petraea

  • Opposite to pedunculate oak
     
  • Acorns don’t have stalks
     
  • Leaves do have stalks

It likes lighter, well-drained soils and is the dominant oak in the uplands most common in the north and west. It doesn’t tolerate flooding, unlike the pedunculate oak.