Topic: can anyone tell me what type of tree this is?

[sawfish]

[Unwashed]

First guess would be a sorbus of some sort, swedish whitebeam maybe.  Do you have them growing in the street?

[sawfish]

it was growing wild in orkney

[OllieC]

it was growing wild in orkney

In that case it's a very lucky tree... with a very short life expectancy!

[Obelixx]

Does that mean you dug it up from the wild?   That's illegal.

If, as seems likely,  it does turn out to be a Swedish whitebeam it will get to between 10 and 20 metres tall and have a trunk of 60cm diametre so I think maybe you'll find you've squished it too close into that corner.

[Unwashed]

it was growing wild in orkney

>:(

[Bugloss2009]

maybe that's what we should do - find trees in a harsh environment, and then give them a better home

like what Madonna does with children

[ipt8]

If those leaves are very white underneath it looks very much like Swedish WHitebeam.