Into the Woods We Go ..........

This week for the Explore challenge, our group practised identifying trees by their twigs in Saltwells Wood. It is a good job we like a challenge! Luckily we had our Woodland Trust, Nature Detectives Twig IDials to help us. We looked at opposite and alternate bud positions, bud colour and other clues including the presence of flowers and thorns. Our list of tree species was: Ash, Hazel, Horse Chestnut, Lime, Alder, Sycamore, Holly, Field Maple, Oak and Beech. The female pinky red flowers of Hazel were very beautiful but easy to overlook. Hawthorn was a slightly easier species to remember for the football fans amongst our group as it is the name of the football ground belonging to local team West Bromwich Albion! This was a very challenging activity but we have some potential botanists who passed their tree identification assessment when they returned to college. A big thank you to Emma, Assistant Warden at Saltwells NNR for leading a very enjoyable walk around the woods.