With the great leaves of 2012 now firmly on the ground, it is time to start learning how to identify them! It is an exciting thought to think that we can actually identify our native trees simply by what they leave on the ground.

Although it is advised that you use a whole palate of evidence to identify a tree (petals, stamens etc.), you can work out where a leaf has come from merely by looking at its properties.

But what do leaves do for a tree?

Quite simply leaves are one of the most important organs of the tree and provide the plant with food through photosynthesis.

Almost like individual factories, the leaves absorb the carbon dioxide from the air and produce the sugars needed to grow. These are then sent to the trunk of the plant. One of the primary waste products of the tree is oxygen; a gas that is pivotal for our environment.

Interestingly, when the leaves fall off of the branches in autumn, they decay and actually help to make a rich soil for the tree to grow as well as keeping it moist.

With a whole host of beautiful wooden products within our range including oak cabinets, birch chairs and ash wardrobes, here are a few autumn leaves to find on your walks this autumn and winter:

Oak Tree Leaves

It is an amazing thought to ponder that a healthy oak tree can have up to 200,000 leaves during a summer; over a period of sixty years it has the potential to shed 3,600 pounds of leaves, meaning that one individual tree will return 70% of its nutrients back into the ground.

You are most likely to identify the leaf of an oak tree by the lobes on each side of the leaf. A healthy leaf will have roughly five to seven lobes on each side, making it instantly recognisable.

Depending on the type of oak tree the leaf has come from (there are two main species, Sessile Oak and Pedunculate Oak), the pedunculate oak leave stalks are particularly short, often found being less than a centimetre, whereas a sessile oak leaf will be between one and one and a half centimetres.

Near the end of winter, you will be able to find next year's buds at the end of the tree's twigs; they shall be rusty coloured with overlapping scales near the base of the bud.

Birch Tree Leaves

Unlike the oak tree which can live for up to 500 hundred years, birch trees live relatively short lives and, after the last Ice Age, they were one of the very first species of tree to colonise the United Kingdom.

Though there are very many types of birch trees, the most common are the silver birch tree and downy birch tree.

Their leaves are perhaps one of the most recognisable in the land as they are typically triangular with serrated tooth edges. With this in mind however, the leaves of the downy birch are particularly rounded and deviate from the recognisable triangular shape.

Interestingly in the past, bundles of birch twigs were used as a corporal punishment and on the winter birch twigs you will find small green and brown buds towards the end of the season.

Ash leaves

Like oak, ash trees, otherwise known as Fraxinus excelsior, can live for up to one hundred years.

At the beginning of autumn, the ash tree is one of the very first trees to lose its leaves, with each stem bearing between nine and thirteen leaves; like the birch their edges are serrated with fine hairs on the lower surface of the leaf.

Unlike the buds of the birch tree, ash buds are black and velvety in appearance and are sometimes compared to a Bishop's Mitre.

Do you have any pictures of any particularly large leaves that you have found on your walks around the countryside? Send us your picture and we'll find out who's discovered the largest leaf!