Common Alder Tree | Alnus Glutinosa

Alder trees (Alnus Glutinosa), with their attractive foliage, have quickly become one of my favourites. I love trees that are tough (UK hardy), easy to grow, low maintenance and resilient. The Alder tree certainly ticks all these boxes. And the leaves are really nice too. Once you know what one looks like, they are easy trees to identify. There's just something about them that I like. Lately, I've been growing a lot of different trees from seed.

Scots Pine and Corsican Pines being two that stand out to me. I'm not sure if its my bad luck, but most of them have died. Even though I haven't done anything out of the ordinary. One day they seem in good health, and the next they are keeled over and in serious trouble. None of them have shown even a decent level of recuperation strength.

In my experience so far, when the Pines look unwell they never recover. They seem so sensitive that its not a tree that I will be growing from seed again anytime soon. I still have a few alive, but it has been quite a frustrating experience. Maybe next time I'll buy one or two that are already a few months old from eBay and see if I have better luck with those. I'm sure I will with some that are more established.

The Common Alders however (I think they are Common Alder) are all thriving. Some of them have taken a fair amount of abuse too at the hands of some squirrels. Dug up numerous times, covered with soil, left for dead, etc. But the Alders seem to just dust themselves off, and within a day or two they're as good as new again. I've got one in a see-through pot (a cut in half plastic water bottle) and I was amazed to see that some of the roots are actually purple.

Some of the leaves are also turning purple, and I believe that is down to the lower night temperatures. That could also be the case in regards to the roots but I'm not sure. Known as the Nitrogen fixer, and being able to tolerate growing in low nutrient soil, my Alder's are also potted in quite poor soil, yet they still look extremely healthy.

They are trees that love wet conditions, and are usually found near ponds, streams, lakes, etc. So as you can imagine, they are right at home near the water, and their roots can handle marsh-type conditions. Alders are even able to withstand totally waterlogged ground to a certain extent.

I will be posting more information about the Alder tree and uploading some more images to show people, who are unaware of what they are looking for when they are out and about, exactly what they look like. Actually, I didn't intend to put so many images in this post, so I think these pictures alone will allow for most people to be able to easily recognise this tree. Also on my list of trees and shrubs to collect some seeds from are: Rowan (Mountain Ash), Lilac (got them) and Silver Birch (got them).