On 2 Aug, 17:16, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:

That was my reaction, but plane leaves are also lobed. *For better
indentification, we need a closer picture of the leaves and of the
fruit (if any).

The answer is, of course, there are plenty of suitable trees - but
we need to know the location, soil type, whether deciduous or
evergreen is wanted, and the timescale to grow to 9 metres.

Hi,

Thanks for all contributions so far. Here are some more pictures that
may help with identifying the existing trees, sorry but I'm hampered
by using a low quality phone camera and by the trees being the other
side of a high wall. The leaves are about hand-sized, and have five
"points", I think you can just about see from the photos.
http://img300.imageshack.us/my.php?i...8081723hm0.jpg
http://img300.imageshack.us/my.php?i...8081724oh2.jpg

The location for the new tree is quite sheltered. It will be
immediately north of a six foot wall, and immediately east of another
six foot wall with a six foot mesh fence on top of it. Soil type I
don't know about, it's in north London if that helps, quite heavy and
holds water well, without being waterlogged. We tend to prefer
deciduous trees, although in many ways I can see the advantage of
evergreen as an all-year screen. The types of evergreen I personally
prefer, the broad-leafed ones like holly rather than the coniferous
ones, are I think very slow-growing? I guess it would be nice if it
could get to 9m in ten years. We'd be prepared to shell out for a
reasonably mature sapling, maybe two or three metres already, to give
us a head start.

If we can put up with it being coniferous I'm beginning to think maybe
a leylandii isn't such a bad idea for this particular purpose.