One of the ways to get to know the trees on your patch is to start in the winter by looking at their twigs.
A twig is the tip of a branch and has buds on it. The buds will eventually swell up and open to produce leaves in the spring.
Each kind of tree has buds of a particular shape and position on the twig. These features can be used to identify the tree.
A simple way to do this is to hold up a piece of white paper behind your twig and photograph it.
Here are three from the patch:
Next, identify the twig from pictures in a book on trees or at an appropriate website, such as:
- https://www.educationnaturepark.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-10/Woodland%20Trust%20Twig%20Identification%20Guide.pdf
- https://glosnats.org/winter-twig-identification/
Using this simple technique, the twigs in the pictures come from the following trees – 1 Horse chestnut, 2 Beech, and 3 Lime.
Once a tree has been identified by its twigs, children can keep an eye on the buds over the following weeks and maybe photograph how they change and burst into leaf.
This activity can lead to the start of a food chain, as when leaves newly emerge some of them are visited by aphids to feed. When this happens, standing very quietly away from the tree may reveal visits by small birds feeding on the aphids.
