This month we turn to the reproductive process in trees, this process is the bit by which we all get to see and know a part of a tree from a very early age.

Be it an apple, walnut, acorn or pine cone, most children could recognise this part of the tree even if they did not know what tree it came from.

Animals and humans all benefit greatly from the reproductive process be it giving up its fruit so it will have its seed planted or growing an attractive flower with tasty nectar to attract a pollinator. Each tree has developed its own strategy to pass on its genes and the following piece will hopefully give you a basic understanding of how many achieve it.

All the tree needs to do is get its female flowers pollinated by its male flowers, grow a seed, and get that seed down to the ground for it to start growing another tree.

Most trees have both male and female flowers on the same tree; these are called monoecious (one house). If a tree has one type of flower on one tree it is called dioecious (two houses). The Yew, willow and gingko are common examples of dioecious trees. Identification of male or female trees is easier in the autumn when it is easier to see the difference. The female yew tree has the very distinctive (and poisonous) berries whereas the male has very small green balls which are very hard to spot.

As well as mono/dioecious trees are further divided into complete and incomplete flowers. A complete flower will have all of its parts including: petals, sepals, stamen and pistil. An incomplete flower is missing one or more of these parts. Finally as flower can be perfect (having both male and female parts) or imperfect (lacking either a stamen or pistil). Whatever the flower type is, it needs to get the pollen from the stamen to the pistil.

Pollination can be either by wind or by insects. A tree with insect pollinated flowers will typically have an attractive flower and a nice aroma to attract an insect to the flower and then entice the insect in with some delicious nectar so that the pollen can be passed on to the insect so it can take it to a female flower or another trees flower and pollinate it.

If the pollination is by wind then the tree will typically have long drooping flowers so that the wind can blow the pollen to another receptive flower. The birch is fine example of a wind pollinating tree.

Conifers use wind to pollinate their cones (they do not have flowers) and each cone is either male or a larger female cone. The wind blows the pollen from male to female, the male cone will fall off and the female cone will grow the seeds.

This process appears to be very complex and diverse and we could get lost in the intricacies of it all. Whatever it is it works, it is beautiful and happens every spring. The first we probably know about it is when we start to smell the wonderful aromas, see the beautiful flowers, watch the insects getting busy on a spring day or hear the sneezes of the hay fever sufferers!

Hopefully as you are reading this we are all starting to notice the first signs of spring and the cold dark days of winter are drifting away. Happy springtime to one and all!