In what seemed a good idea at the time, I booked to go on a ‘Conifer Identification’ course last weekend at Oxford University’s Harcourt Aboretum, home to some beautiful magnolias and a host of rare trees.
It was a rather long way to go to look at (admittedly quite unusual) Christmas trees, but it turned out to be fascinating; cramming in taxonomy, habitat and plant use, as well as a tour round the collection looking at a range of different specimens.
In theory I can now tell the difference between a spruce and a fir simply by looking at a single needle. In practice though I’ll still be checking the label……