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The small fruits are a sweet foraging treat. You can eat then straight from the shrub. You can also chop them and eat with cereal, pancakes, salads etc. The dried leaves make a vitamin C rich tea.

Will grow into a very large tree if not coppiced. Often slender for a big tree, tapering towards the top. In woodland, it will develop a very tall, straight trunk.

Q. robur is ultimately a large tree; heavy limbed, spreading with twisted branches and broad crown which will become broader than tall.

When growing in the forest – tall dome on upward facing branches on top of long straight trunk.

A small to medium sized tree with a straight, clean trunk. A fairly open and uncluttered top with branches pointing cleanly upwards. Hardy.

A large tree (up to 25m) with a solid trunk. The spreading crown is often high. Branches take an upward direction but droop at the thinner ends.

Use the leaves in salads or stir fries. You can also add them as an ingredient in soups etc.

Great stir-fried with oil/butter and garlic and eaten with potatoes and other vegetables.

The leaves can be a little bitter on their own, best to mix with other salad leaves.

The leaves are great in salads and fish. They have a sharp lemony flavour due to the low quantities of oxalic acid.

Leaves are juice and delicious in salads or on sandwiches.

Messy-looking, dense, twiggy, spiny, spreading. Generally looks like a big bush rather than a tree. Can form impenetrable thickets. Can be surrounded by suckers. Hard to see any central trunk.