[Closed] Identify this tree... (Please!)

Well from pic 1 & 2 a very small one!!

I'm going with wooden and real just to get the Radiohead gag in

Time for you to bough out with lines like that.

Looks like some sort of willow. Maybe grey willow or goat willow (or a hybrid).

Are you sure the first two come from the last?

Pic 3 looks like wych elm, but the leaves in the first two pics look more willowy.

Willow

My mate says it's maybe cherry or prunus sub species but hard to say without better pictures.

He's a tree surgeon.

Willow.

I'm not convinced it's willow. Willow leaves are usually smoother, and willow bark is usually deeply fissured. I'm leaning towards Prunes, but the bark typically has horizontal rings.

Could be a bird cherry. Very common around here though not many other places.

Could it be red ash ‘fraxinus pennsylvanica’

i have a similar tree nearby that’s distinctly ash like but had leaves as you’ve pictured that just aren’t quite ash, closest match in my book is red ash.

Having googled it a bit more I’m doubling down on my guess. It ain’t cherry and it ain’t willow, it’s so clearly ash from the twig and bud shape but the leaves are not our native fraxinus excelsior, looks like the n American red/green ash which my book says gets planted here and I’m sure the group inexplicably standing in the forest near me are the same.

But do the first two pictures definitely come from the tree in the third?

The leaves that appear to be emanating from the lower left branch of the tree in the third picture are completely different to those in the first two.

If the tree in the third picture is the tree in question, and those are its leaves, i'd go so far as to say it definitely is a wych elm. If so, it is also a wych elm suffering from dutch elm disease, and you should probably put it out of its misery.

Certainly not native Ash, the buds are black on that species. Could be a variety of Willow. Not Rowan/ Mountain Ash either.

The one behind it is dying too.

welshfarmer +1. Bird cherry (prunus padus variety) would be my guess. AKA hagberry oop north. Have another look in April/May to see if it blossoms. Fruit is small, black and bitter

It's 100% not a Wych elm or any type of elm, so probably doesn't have Dutch elm disease and isn't dying, a bit of an aphid infestation perhaps. Leaves look like goat willow and the bark looks like willow but I'd expect it to be more fissured.

Goat willow, aka pussy willow - Salix caprea.

Might be a hybrid with grey willow, which happens naturally - leaves are a bit narrower and grayer on the underside than many goat willows.

Willow, pussy of some sort.

Thanks all ,there are a lot of Goat Willows in the area and it looks similar so Goat Willow or similar sounds very likely. (But I'll watch it carefully in the spring to see if further clues develop.) Mind you I only think the other trees are goat willow because I asked on here before so maybe STW always guesses Goat Willow! 😀

Vazaha, you're right to be suspicious - it's a right old tangle of trees there. I had to physically follow the the branch back the tree with my hands to be sure the branch I got the leaves off was actually attached to the trunk I was interested in. So I'm 100pc the two match, but I had to go to some effort to be sure.

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Goat Willow has rough bark.

It’s not Damson is it?

Might also take a punt on a Gean Cherry.

Here it is from google earth, but bear in mind you're seeing a mixture of trees here and I'm not sure which is which, not even sure if the biggest one is the one I'm interested in.

https://ibb.co/cf386L

I think it's a pussy willow, not a gean or an ash anyway.

I think it’s a pussy willow

I do to, it's very similar to others in the area. It may not be right, but it's a good enough ID to satisfy my OCD.

Another for a cherry here

A lot of cherries around me, and plenty of cherry in my log pile and it doesn't look like cherry to me. (Of course, there might be cherry varieties that look very different to the cherry varieties I've seen).

I'll look out for blossom in spring which ought to be conclusive. (I think.)

Cotoneaster of some sort?

It's a rare cross breed of pussy willow and ash, known as gash.

I am answering on my partner’s Single Track account.

The leaves in the first two pictures are (as has been suggested) Willow. The shape of the leaf appears slightly wider at the top than the base (obovate – i.e. upside-down egg shape). That is characteristic of Grey Willow (Salix cinerea) and the twigs look good for this too. However, the twist on the leaf tip is often seen in Goat Wilow (Salix caprea) and the two often hybridise. The trunk in the third picture is also typical Willow. So, definitely Willow but without meeting the tree in person I would not want to say for sure either Grey or Hybrid but I would lean towards hybrid. There are a lot of Willow species with different leaf shapes and Willows are tricky group. If you look at the buds of Willow you will see only one bud scale covering the bud; whereas, if you look at the buds of many other types of tree e.g. Oaks, Cherry, Beech you will see many scales that overlap each other. One scale on a bud is a good feature to help to identify Willow.

Ash leaves different because they are made up of many leaflets on a central stalk (google pinnate leaves).

The third picture is a bit confusing because the leaves which are clearly visible do not belong to the tree trunk. The tree leaves (not the low shrub at the bottom) look good for either Hornbeam or Wych Elm (I am leaning towards the Wych Elm) but the resolution is not good enough for me to be sure. These two can be separated easily from bud shape. Hornbeam has long buds but Wych Elm has small round ones.

Hope that helps.

Bruce’s partner has it. Great skills there.

Many thanks, Bruce's partner. That's pretty comprehensive, and always gives confidence to have the 'workings' explained!

Yeah, there are two (or perhaps three) trees growing together all totally intermingled so the third "trunk" shot could be very misleading. The two leaf shots and the main 'trunk' in the third shot are what I'm interested in, everything else is noise. I should really have made that clearer in my OP, sorry all.

I think this one has been conclusively cracked.