Identify a bush by its leaf

Shrubs are often harder to name than trees. Many garden shrubs are pruned into shapes that hide their natural form, hedges seldom get the chance to flower, and a handful of species make up a large share of the hedges in any one region. The good news is that those common shrubs have leaves with clear features, and the checklist below separates most of them.

How to photograph a shrub leaf

• Choose a mature, undamaged leaf from the middle of a shoot, not the soft new growth at the tip. On a clipped hedge, reach inside for one.
• Lay it flat on paper or against your palm and shoot from directly above, with the tip, base and leaf stalk in the frame.
• Take a second photo of a whole shoot tip, so the way the leaves sit on the stem (opposite or alternate) is visible.
• If the shrub has flowers or berries, photograph those too. They are more distinctive than any leaf.

The shrub leaf checklist

1. Evergreen or deciduous

A shrub that keeps green leaves through winter is evergreen (or semi-evergreen in mild areas, like some privets), which already rules out a long list of candidates. Brown, dead leaves that hang on, as on young beech hedges, do not count. Evergreen leaves are often thick, leathery and glossy, as in holly, cherry laurel, camellia and rhododendron.

2. Needles or scales

Conifer shrubs have needles or tiny scales instead of broad leaves. Yew has flat, dark green needles with two paler bands underneath, and its seeds sit in a red, fleshy cup. Junipers have sharp needles, often in groups of three, or overlapping scales on mature growth. Arborvitae (thuja) has flat, fan-like sprays of small scales. Yew is poisonous in almost every part.

3. Opposite or alternate

This is the most useful single check for shrubs. Common garden shrubs with opposite leaves include boxwood, privet, lilac, forsythia, viburnum, hydrangea and weigela. Holly, barberry, cotoneaster, photinia, cherry laurel, rhododendron and azalea have alternate leaves.

4. Shape and edge

Note whether the edge is smooth, finely toothed, spiny or wavy. Holly leaves are the classic spiny edge, though leaves high on an older holly are often smooth. Boxwood leaves are small, oval and smooth-edged. Privet leaves are oval and smooth-edged too, but larger and thinner than boxwood.

5. Spines and thorns

Barberry has spines at the base of each leaf cluster, single or split into three depending on the species, and the inner bark and wood are bright yellow. Roses have prickles along the stems. Firethorn (pyracantha) has sharp thorns among small, toothed, evergreen leaves.

6. Smell

Crush a leaf. Rosemary, lavender, bay laurel and myrtle are strongly aromatic. Cherry laurel leaves smell of bitter almonds when crushed, a sign of the cyanide-forming compounds that make the plant poisonous.

Classic shrub look-alikes

• Boxwood and Japanese holly (Ilex crenata) are both used for small, clipped hedges and look alike from a distance. Boxwood leaves are opposite with smooth edges; Japanese holly leaves are alternate with small, shallow teeth.
• Boxwood and privet: both opposite and smooth-edged, but privet leaves are larger, thinner and more pointed, and privet flowers in strong-smelling white clusters followed by black berries.
• Cherry laurel and bay laurel are both called laurel. Cherry laurel has large, very glossy leaves that smell of almonds when crushed and is poisonous. Bay laurel, the culinary bay leaf, has smaller, narrower, often wavy-edged leaves with a spicy smell. Do not cook with a laurel leaf unless you are sure it is bay laurel (Laurus nobilis).
• Rhododendron and azalea are the same genus. Azaleas are generally smaller-leaved, and many are deciduous; a photo identifier will often answer simply Rhododendron.

Fruiting shrubs

In warm climates some of the most common hedge shrubs bear fruit. Surinam cherry is widely planted as a hedge: its leaves are opposite, glossy and aromatic, and its new growth is often bronze-red. Other fruiting shrubs include acerola, cocoplum and miracle fruit. For single-stemmed fruit trees, see tree identification by leaf and the fruit tree identifier.