Identifying Trees: A Guide to Tree Identification

When I was in school, every year our teachers would drag us outside and teach us the basics for identifying trees. Before long, I could identify just about any tree and I realized tree identification, though it sounds kind of boring, was actually pretty neat to learn about.

It's hard to learn how to identify trees without using pictures - especially if you are not really familiar with basic trees such as pine, maple, oak, etc. However, the trees are easy to identify using these three elements: their leaves, their seeds, and their fruit. For example, you could probably find it easy identifying trees such as an apple or pear tree if you noticed that it had apples or pears!

Most trees are categorized into two groups: evergreen trees (such as pine trees) and deciduous trees (such as maple trees). The evergreen trees are easy to remember, since they are pretty much anything that would resemble a Christmas tree and stay green even throughout the winter. Deciduous trees are most trees with flat leaves and may have fruit or seeds.

There are many ways to go about identifying trees that are in your backyard. One of the things we did at school was collect one leaf from each kind of tree, and write down its location, colors, if it had any fruit or seeds, and any other distinguishing features. We then took these leaves and taped them in a notebook with the data we collected. The next step in identifying trees is to compare the leaves of the trees to ones we found in books. (I'm not sure if the internet even existed back when we did this!)

If you would rather search online, arborday.org has some great information, and even an interactive quiz to teach you more on identifying trees. You can search by state or city (since many trees are native to certain geographic locations) or take a look at their photo galleries. They also have a very affordable book for just $5 to teach you all about trees and its pocket sized format makes it easy to carry along on a tree identification hike or walk. A book all about identifying trees can be a great resource to have on hand, even if it seems like something you would never use. You'd be surprised how many times I've reached for my book to help with identifying trees!

Identifying trees with friends and family can be a great way to spend time together in the fall and spring, have a great fall season everyone!