Fruit, seeds and flowers

Fruit types you will meet

• Acorn: a nut set in a cap, found on oaks.
• Samara: a seed with a papery wing. Maples make paired samaras, ash makes single wings, and elm has a round flat wing all the way around the seed.
• Nut: a hard-shelled seed, often in a husk, as in hickory and walnut.
• Drupe: a fleshy fruit around a single hard stone, as in cherry and plum.
• Pome: a fleshy fruit with a core, as in apple and pear.
• Pod: a flat case holding several seeds, as in redbud and black locust.
• Cone: the seed-bearing structure of conifers.

Catkins and flowers

Many wind-pollinated trees, such as birches, oaks and willows, bear catkins, which are drooping spikes of small flowers. Showy flowers on cherries, magnolias and dogwoods are easy to recognise but last only a short time, so use them as a bonus and not as the starting point.

Some trees flower before their leaves appear. Red maple, American elm, redbud and many cherries do. That makes spring the one time of year when a tree can be named from a distance by its flowers alone.

Use what is on the ground

Fallen fruit, cones and winged seeds can be picked up and compared with a guide. Take care with any fruit you do not recognise. Never eat anything from a tree you have not identified with certainty.

When to look

Maples differ widely: silver and red maples shed their seeds in late spring, while sugar and Norway maples hold theirs until autumn. Oak acorns fall in autumn, and acorns of red oaks take two growing seasons to ripen. Sweetgum balls and sycamore fruit balls hang on through winter. The seasons calendar shows what is flowering and fruiting each month.

Not all fruit is food

Black walnut, hickory and beech nuts are eaten by people and wildlife. Horse chestnut conkers are not edible. Yew seeds and many berries are poisonous. Teach children to look and not to taste.