Trees in Springtime

I was pondering what photos to use for today’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge (spring) and I was feeling a little stuck. I’ve done many, many blog posts about spring, and don’t want to repeat myself too much. But I tend to focus on the spring growth on the ground, so what about the spring growth a little higher up?

The Beech tree in my front garden is one of the easiest trees to monitor and see if any leaves have appeared. This year the first leaves on it were photographed on 12th April:

At first just a few branches have leaves, and gradually the whole tree turns a wonderful fresh green:

It has flowers too:

One of my other favourite trees in spring is the Elm. There’s one near the village pond. It has flowers before it has leaves and often on a sunny spring day you can get photos with lots of bokeh. They start off kind of pink and frilly and then as they grow they get more green.

And then later on the leaves come …

The Rowan tree in the back garden starts off with leaves and flower buds at the same time, all curled up and needing to unfurl:

Later the flowers come out, before turning into red berries in the autumn.

There are Horse Chestnut trees in the village on the way round to the pond. Most people (in the UK) will be familiar with them as ‘conker trees’, but they’re more than that! In the spring they have an abundance of frilly pink and cream flowers growing in tall spikes above their fresh new spring leaves. They make me think of many-tiered birthday cakes!

They start off looking quite small and delicate before they explode into flower:

Let’s have one final tree in spring … the mighty Oak. They have flowers too, surprisingly dangly pretty flowers!

Later in the year there will be acorns of course, which most of us are far more familiar with than these flowers.

Hope you enjoyed my little tour of local trees in springtime. Off to see what the rest of you have chosen for this theme.