which tree is this

Quercus rubra or coccinea?

Could be a Turkey Oak, leaf fall well in advance. A picture of the trunk may help.

it is a beech going by the buds and the bark. and one smallish branch that has the typical F sylvativa leaf. I thought turkey oak when i first came across it but the buds are beech.

It's almost certainly Fagus sylvatica 'Laciniata'.

There is a beautiful one at Howick Hall up the road from me :-)

i had it down to two: laciniata and aspleniifolia. but i cant get decent images of them to compare them.
how do they differ? do you know the difference?

Hey, I forgot about Asplenifolia! To be honest, I don't know the difference so have looked it up in my field guide to the trees of Britain and northern Europe by Alan Mitchell. It says:

'Heterophylla' ('Laciniata') 1820 Europe. Cut-leaf or Fern-leaf Beech. Frequent in parks and gardens, often in towns (notably in Bath). A mixture of forms with leaves variously cut and lobed, the last leaves at the ends of the shoots often willow-like, long and strap-shaped. Normal leaves may be cut into triangular or long, narrow lobes, or have a long sinus almost to the midrib in the middle ('Asplenifolia'). Where branches cut or damaged, ordinary entire leaves will appear, with leaves of intermediate shapes, because the plant is a "chimaera" with the inner tissues of ordinary beech overlaid by the tissues of the cut-leaf form. 25 x 3.2m.

chimera, how fascinating, does that occur often in plants, anyone know? I know its infrequent in humans, but does occur, never knew it did in plants

chimeras in the plant world are not uncommon and can be achieved by grafting.[in the simplest form]. i suppose the tetraploidy of some plants makes them technically chimera too.

the date 1820 fits in perfectly with the late georgian early victorian pleasure grounds. I cant find my tree guide. havent seen it since our last house move so it is probably still in a box somewhere.
the place was built in 1794 and revamped in the late 1830's and that is when the grounds were extended and planted up.

Not sure what tetraploidy means, Seaburn! Something to do with three - something?

tetraploidy is where both dna sets of the parents fuse to make a double dna set. Normal sex cells are haploid [half set] then when they fuse at fertilisation they form a diploid [full set] offspring. tends to be the norm for animals and many plants. if the sex cells stay diploid and then they fuse you get tetraploidy [x4] the common endosperm of many cereal crops are triploidy . emma wheat is an evolutionary example.
here endeth the lesson :o)

I think I've grasped it - but that's not what happens in humans, is it? I saw a case of a woman whose children had different DNA from hers, and she turned out to be chimeric in her reproductive system or something.

i remember the documentary. the theory was that as a very small multicellular stage it absorbed a non identical twin egg. that developed into some of her the reproductive bits for starters. hence the dna oddities of her children.
how common? well it is any ones guess. usually dna/chromosome abnormalities miscarry, many in the first 4 weeks.