--- title: Park trees: telling oaks, maples, chestnuts, birches, limes and willows apart — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Park trees: telling oaks, maples, chestnuts, birches, limes and willows apart», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Trees in a park are like people in a crowd: once you know a few clues — the shape of the fac --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Park trees: telling oaks, maples, ches… # Park trees: telling oaks, maples, chestnuts, birches, limes and willows apart Lesson 339 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/0/) — Trees in a park are like people in a crowd: once you know a few clues — the shape of the face, the clothes, the voice — you can tell them apart even from far away. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/1/) — For trees the clues are leaves, seeds, bark and buds. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/2/) — The oak drops acorns in little cups, the maple's leaf is shaped like an open hand and its seeds spin down like helicopters, and the horse chestnut's leaf spreads out like a hand with five to seven fingers. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/3/) — Park a car under a lime tree in July and come back to a windscreen covered in sticky drops: the aphids up in the leaves have been dribbling sweet honeydew all afternoon. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/4/) — Hug a tree with your arms and a tape measure and you can even guess its age. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/5/) — In cartoons every tree is a green lollipop. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/6/) — Real trees each have a face of their own, and in winter, when the leaves are gone, bark, buds and shape still give them away. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/7/) — Oak leaves have wavy edges and acorns sit in little cups; an oak can live for many hundreds of years, and one big oak can be home to hundreds of kinds of insects. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/8/) — Maple leaves are shaped like a hand, usually with five points, maple seeds spin like helicopters as they fall, and the sycamore in Britain is a kind of maple. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/9/) — A horse chestnut leaf is made of five to seven leaflets like fingers, and a fallen leaf leaves a horseshoe-shaped scar on the twig with dots like the nails in a horseshoe. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/10/) — A sweet chestnut has long toothed leaves and bark that spirals around the trunk; its nuts can be roasted and eaten, and its case is much spikier than a horse chestnut's. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/11/) — Birches have white bark and small triangular leaves, are often the first trees to grow on open land, and in Ukraine and other countries people drink birch sap in spring. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/12/) — Lime trees have heart-shaped leaves; aphids on them drop sweet honeydew, their summer flowers smell sweet and bees love them, and they are not related to the lime fruit. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/13/) — Willows love wet ground and grow fast; willow bark has a chemical used long ago to ease pain, and the medicine aspirin was later made from a similar chemical. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/14/) — Willow catkins are flowers, soft like a cat's paw, which is why people call them pussy willow, and they are early food for bees. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/15/) — Each ring in a tree stump is one year of growth; wide rings show good years, thin rings show dry or cold years, and the oldest trees have thousands of rings. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/16/) — Many trees grow about 2.5 centimetres around the trunk each year, so a trunk two metres around may be about 80 years old, but this is only a rough guess because trees grow at different speeds. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/339-park-trees-telling-oaks-maples-chestnuts-birches-limes-and-willows-apart/17/) — In winter, bark, buds and shape still tell trees apart: ash has black buds, beech has long pointed buds, birch bark is white and oak bark is rough and cracked. - ← previous: [The vegetable patch: peas, potatoes, tomatoes and slugs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/338-the-vegetable-patch-peas-potatoes-tomatoes-and-slugs/) - next →: [Weeds and wildflowers: dandelions, nettles, daisies, clover and plantain](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/340-weeds-and-wildflowers-dandelions-nettles-daisies-clover-and-plantain/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)