Fruit trees

Apple

Apple (Malus domestica) has alternate, oval leaves with fine teeth and a downy underside. Blossom is pink in bud and white when open, in clusters. The fruit is a pome, a fleshy fruit with a core. Wild crab apples are smaller and have sour fruit. Grafted trees have a swelling at the base of the trunk where the variety joins the rootstock.

Pear

Pear leaves are glossy, oval and finely toothed, on long stalks. Blossom is white, opening before the leaves. Fruit is a pome that narrows towards the stalk. Bark on older pears breaks into small, dark square blocks.

Cherry, plum and peach

These are stone fruits, or drupes. Cherry has glossy, finely toothed leaves and bark with horizontal lenticels. Plum leaves are rounder and more wrinkled. Peach leaves are long and narrow with a toothed edge, and the fruit is fuzzy. All flower in spring, often before the leaves.

How to tell the families apart

• Pome (apple, pear, quince): core with a papery chamber holding small seeds.
• Drupe (cherry, plum, peach, apricot): a single hard stone.
• Nut (walnut, hazel, sweet chestnut): a hard shell around a kernel.

Naming old trees

Fruit varieties cannot reliably be named from the tree alone, since there are thousands of apple varieties. Local fruit groups, orchard societies and extension offices can often identify a variety from a fruit sample, taken at ripeness, with a leaf and twig.

Eating from the wild

Never eat fruit you have not identified. Wild apples and plums are generally safe once identified, but apple seeds and the kernels inside cherry, plum and peach stones contain compounds that can release cyanide, so do not crush or chew them.