Fruits on a young hornbeam tree (Carpinus betulus) outside Cardiff and Vale College in Dumballs Road, Cardiff
The monthly tree-following link box has now closed for another month. To explore everyone’s updates, please go straight to the bottom of this post.
Why don’t you join us and follow a tree, too? You can start at any time and you don’t have to contribute every month if that’s too much of a commitment for you.
Here in Cardiff it has been sunny for a few weeks with the occasional day of light, drizzly rain and, as I mentioned in my previous post, I am currently spending a lot of time in a different part of Cardiff, studying for a month at Cardiff and Vale College in Dumballs Road, in the Bay area.
Mature hornbeams outside the Lloyds Bank building in Dumballs Road
It’s funny to think that I had never noticed a hornbeam until I followed one in 2014. Now I see them everywhere. Although Dumballs Road used to be a series of industrial sites, many shiny new offices are going up there and there are many hornbeams used as street trees.
Young hornbeam outside Cardiff and Vale College
Cardiff’s street tree of choice used to be lime or linden (small-leaved Tilia cordata, large-leaved Tilia platyphyllos or the hybrid Tilia europaea). You see very mature lindens everywhere and at the moment some of them have a tremendous heady perfume.
The old hornbeam I followed had very few fruits and the same seems to be the case with the bigger trees on Dumballs Road. But the young trees outside the college are full of the unripe green fruits, which are small nuts, partly surrounded by bracts forming a three-pointed involucre. You can see them at the top of this post.
If you are new to tree following, read all about it here.
And without further ado, here are this month’s links…
Alison at the Blackberry Garden – quince
Erika Groth in Sweden – rowan (Sorbus aucuparia)
John Kingdon – The Rivendell Garden Blog – crab apple – and a chainsaw
Hollis (In the Company of Plants and Rocks) – limber pine (Pinus flexilis)
Mike – Flighty’s Plot – Liz’s tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) and Flighty’s dogwood (Cornus)
Frances at Island Threads, off the North West coast of Scotland – rowan (Sorbus aucuparia)
Pat – Squirrelbasket – 100 elm trees
Thank you to everyone – see you all again on August 7.
If you are new to tree following, read all about it here.
The Squirrelbasket 
Good to see some thriving street trees- they seem under threat in some areas. Thanks for hosting this meme
Especially Sheffield, I think!
So far our council has been great with street trees – although disappointingly Cardiff did not come out too well in a survey of the proportion of green spaces in cities. I was surprised, as I always think of Cardiff as full of parks and green spaces!
I have visited your post and commented – thanks for taking part again, against all the quince adversity!
Best wishes 🙂
[…] hosts this tree-following meme over at her blog. She’s a lot more ambitious than I. She’s following an avenue of 100 trees. And she has […]
Those hornbeams look very well-behaved. I have one in the back garden. Some 28 years old and some 25 feet across.
Lovely jubbly! And I’m glad it wasn’t the tree you took a chainsaw to!
Thanks for joining us again 🙂
Thanks for hosting, Pat. Busy these days, but I’m glad I took the time to visit a tree!
Yours was a lovely post as always!
You have such wonderful, old, unspoilt places in Wyoming 🙂
Another rather brief combined post for Liz and myself this month. xx
Brief but beautiful!
Thank you both for taking part again 🙂
just left the link to my post, thanks for hosting Pat, your Cardiff hornbeams look so symetrical, mine are asymetrical and smaller, more like shrubs than trees, Frances
Interesting. Of course they can be grown as a rather neat hedge, I think.
I enjoyed your rowan post. Thanks for taking part again 🙂