Turn left either across the grass or back round by the cycleway to Victoria Avenue and cross at the first pelican crossing. Walk up the path onto Jesus Green between the (24) London Plane trees which form the finest avenue of trees in Cambridge. London Planes are most easily recognised by their bark which is distinctively patterned by the shed patches, although not all trees show this. The leaves are large and leathery, with radiating veins like those of maples, but alternate. London Plane is believed to be a hybrid of Oriental Plane (the first tree on the tour) and an American species, and has a wide number of forms intermediate between the two parents. Most of the plane trees in Cambridge have broad shallowly-lobed leaves with few teeth like these, but many of the London Planes in London have quite different leaves.

Turn left at the path junction away from the plane avenue and alongside Jesus Ditch. Most of the trees on your left (on this side of the ditch) are Purple Crabs. The remainder plus many on the right, including the first three, are (25) Common Beech. This is a very common native tree, and is also commonly planted in parks as it tends to retain its dead leaves in winter, making the place look at little less desolate than it would otherwise. Beech leaves are alternate and rather oval in shape. The leaf edge is untoothed but with distinctive fine hairs, distinguishing it from Hornbeam, an otherwise similar and equally common tree which we will meet very shortly.

About halfway along the path, on the right and set back behind the beeches, etc are two small (26) English Oak trees, the common oak of lowland Britain. The leaves have rounded lobes and more or less lack stalks (whereas the acorns are stalked). At the base of the leaves are two distinctive ‘auricles’, extensions of the leaf behind the point of attachment to the stalk.

From the oaks trees head off across the grass towards the tennis courts. When you reach the first treeless path, look left along the path. The tall tree inside Jesus College grounds and just to the left of the houses at the end of the path is a (27) Dawn Redwood, the so-called ‘fossil tree’ rediscovered in China in the 1940s; they are very de rigeur in Cambridge. The original UK tree is in the Cambridge Botanic Gardens and there are several fine examples (visible free of charge) in the grounds of Cherry Hinton Hall.

Continue to the tree-lined path. The majority of the trees lining the path are (28) Bird Cherry. Unlike most cherries which have bark with distinctive horizontal lenticel bands, the Bird Cherry has smooth dark bark. In addition the flowers are much smaller but born on long tails (particularly long on these trees which are of the ‘Watereri’ cultivar). The leaves are fairly typical for a cherry, quite large, oval and (in this case finely-)toothed. These cherries appear to have been planted to fill the gaps in an ailing avenue of hawthorns, of which just three now remain. There is one more or less where you meet the path, on the opposite side of the path to the tennis courts These are actually red-flowered cultivars of the (29) Midland Hawthorn.

Turn left along the path towards the houses. The last tree on your right as you reach the road is a (30) Common Hornbeam. The leaves have deeply-impressed parallel veins rather like those of beech (the tree to the left of the path is a beech), but the leaves have coarsely serrated edges. Hanging clusters of winged seeds, like three-dimensional ash keys, are usually also present. Hornbeam is a native tree, very commonly planted in woodland, and common, usually in its (spreading) fastigiate form, as a street tree.

Before we head up Portugal Street opposite, make a brief detour to the tree behind the Hornbeam. This is our fourth lime species so far, an (31) American Lime, really rather similar to the Common Lime, but with larger leaves with obliquely-slashed bases and larger fruit.