Alder or "brown", which is also a root for the English words "elk" and another tree: "elm", a tree distantly related to the alders. With a few exceptions, alders are deciduous, and the leaves are alternate, simple, and serrated. The flowers are catkins with elongate male catkins on the same plant as shorter female catkins, often before leaves appear; they are mainly wind-pollinated, but also visited by bees to a small extent. These trees differ from the birches ("Betula", another genus in the family) in that the female catkins are woody and do not disintegrate at maturity, opening to release the
Common buzzard Common buzzard The common buzzard ("Buteo buteo") is a medium-to-large bird of prey whose range covers most of Europe and extends into Asia. Over much of its range, it is resident year-round, but birds from the colder parts of the Northern Hemisphere typically migrate south (some well into the Southern Hemisphere) for the northern winter. The first formal description of the common buzzard was by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his "Systema Naturae" under the binomial name "Falco buteo". The genus "Buteo" was introduced by the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède in