Birch Vellum Leaves

Birch Vellum Leaves is a quiet offline field guide and practice trainer for anyone learning to name a tree from a single leaf. Twenty-eight common temperate species are covered: oak, field maple, silver birch, beech, ash, small-leaved lime, hornbeam, hazel, alder, white willow, black poplar, rowan, horse chestnut, sycamore, wych elm, wild cherry, crab apple, walnut, London plane, aspen, holly, hawthorn and blackthorn, together with the conifers Scots pine, Norway spruce, silver fir, European larch and yew. EVERY LEAF IS DRAWN, NEVER PHOTOGRAPHED There is not one image file in this app. Each blade is generated on the spot from a botanical descriptor: outline family, lobe count and depth, tooth size and spacing, length to width ratio, tip and base shape, stalk length, and a vein generator that lays down a midrib, its side veins and a light tertiary net. A fixed seed per species keeps every drawing identical from one launch to the next, while small deliberate irregularities keep it looking grown rather than machined. FIVE PLACES TO WORK Herbarium. Browse all twenty-eight species as a cabinet of rendered leaves. Filter by arrangement, by margin and by simple or compound, then open any specimen for a large drawing, the full attribute list, notes on leaf, bark and fruit, and the one field mark that settles it. Key. A stepwise identification key. Answer four questions, needles or broad leaves, alternate or opposite, one blade or several leaflets, and what the edge is doing, and watch the shortlist narrow in front of you. Every candidate stays on screen as you go, so you learn the branching instead of memorising an answer. Identify. Fifteen-question rounds. A leaf is drawn, four names are offered, and every answer comes back with the feature that actually separates the two trees you confused. A streak counter tracks how long you can keep it clean. Progress. Per-species mastery bars built from your own quiz history, weakest species first, plus best streak, rounds completed and a drawn accuracy sparkline across your recent rounds. Glossary. The shape vocabulary, ovate, obovate, lanceolate, cordate, deltoid, palmately lobed, pinnately compound, serrate, crenate, spiny, oblique base and the rest, each term illustrated by its own small rendered example. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO No internet connection, at any point, for any reason. No adverts. No analytics. No accounts and no sign-in. And no sound at all: feedback is visual, with an optional buzz you can switch off. Your progress is stored on your own device and survives closing the app. A NOTE ON REAL LEAVES Living leaves vary with light, season, age and their position on the tree, and hybrids blur the boundaries further. Treat these drawings as an idealised reference for learning the vocabulary, then check a real specimen against several features rather than one. Nothing in this app should be used to decide whether a plant is safe to eat or safe to handle. It identifies shapes, not edibility. Portrait, dark, quiet, and built to stay useful in a wood with no signal.