Identification Features:

• Bark: Starting smooth but soon becoming very scaly with vertically-aligned plates, sometimes showing pale orange in the cracks.
• Twigs: Covered in small glands when young.
• Buds: On stalks, curved, 7mm, mauve-grey colored with two scales that themselves are scaly

Description/General Character:
Upright, straight-trunked tree. Spire-shaped when young, potentially broadening with age.

Range:
Throughout Europe west to the Caucasus and Iran, South to North Africa. Common waterside tree.

Habitat:
Damp ground, including particularly wet Alder carrs.

Other Observations:
Mauve catkins and buds give the tree a ‘purple haze’ look in winter. Male catkins in bunches of 2-3. Female catkins in 3-8 eventually form green cone-like fruit. The previous year’s fruit often persist on the tree as woody cones