Thanks Wow and Hellie. On reading the linked article and doing a bit more digging through gardening books, I am tending to agree with my daughter that it isn’t an almond. It was there when we bought the house in 2003, and I think my original belief it was almond stems back to what we were told when we looked round. That bit of the garden was badly overcrowded with unkempt trees. I had to remove about 20 just to allow the boundary fence to be reinstated as they had pushed it over. The previous owners weren’t here long so it’s likely it predated them and they may have misidentified it themselves.
It is early to blossom but on closer inspection the blossom flowers don’t look quite right. It very rarely produces any fruits. That isn’t surprising because it’s planted in totally the wrong place, up against a north facing fence in part of the garden that is exposed to cold northerlies whipping in across the adjacent fields. The couple of fruits I have seen appear more ornamental plum than almond although I have once found what looked to be an almond on the ground at the base of the tree, but that could have been dragged in from anywhere by the local jackdaws.
Whatever it is, it looks beautiful at the moment.
