The most architecturally close of all Sidney's tree paintings — a view from directly beneath a large tree, looking up into the division of its trunk into multiple major limbs. The tree fills the entire picture field: the trunk base enters from the lower center and splits into three thick branches that reach to the upper edges of the composition and beyond, the sky visible between them in patches of pale blue and pink cloud.
The bark surface is painted with exceptional care: warm orange-brown with darker brown-black mark-stripes indicating the characteristic horizontal markings of a birch or similar smooth-barked tree. These bark marks are among the most patient botanical marks Sidney made — hundreds of small, carefully placed horizontal dashes describing the surface texture of the bark as it curves around the trunk and branches.
At the division point where the main trunk forks, a small creature eye — rendered in red and black — is visible: a knot in the wood, or a small owl-hole, or simply Sidney's habit of placing a watching form at the center of any composition he considered carefully. At the same junction, a tiny green leaf-sprig — the only green in a composition of warm browns and cool sky — marks where new growth has appeared.
In the background, small red flower forms on green stalks — barely visible behind the massive trunks — complete the world around the tree without competing with it. This is a tree occupying space entirely, the landscape existing only at its margins.