How to Identify Trees in Winter

Step-by-Step Guide

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   Step 1: Get field guides to your local trees.

   It's good to have both a general regional guide, as well as a more specific guide for your area.
   
   You can never have enough field guides
   - the more images you have the easier it will be to identify a particular tree.
   
   Field guides can be obtained for free at your local library.
   
   Used bookstores can be another good source, where guides can be bought at about half the price.
   
   Another great resource is a plant identification terminology book.
   
   This will help you understand the language in the guide.
   
   If you're just starting out, focus on using mostly photos of leaves and bark and flowers and fruit to identify trees.
   
   Then move on to using keys and drawings, which are more technical and precise.
   
   Various guides can also provide fascinating anecdotal information about different trees.
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   Step 2: Avoid ornamentals

   Anything planted in a garden, lawn, roadside, park, is often an ornamental.
   
   Ornamentals are garden varieties of native species that are dissimilar enough to throw you off, and make pinpointing an exact species very difficult.
   
   If you want to learn your area ornamentals, there are many guides for the horticulturist about planting and growing trees that will have enough images that you might just find your tree.
   
   There are not that many different native trees in a specific area, and they are easy to learn.
   
   But if you include the city ornamentals, you're talking up to a thousand trees planted from all over the world. , If you have the time to sit at the base of a tree you want to learn, and pore over field guides
   - great.
   
   Identification takes a lot of patience and concentration.
   
   It may take at least 30 minutes of studying various guides before you've found it.
   
   If you cannot sit with the tree, take some photos and samples home with you. , Pick a tree that has at least one, if not two easily identifiable characteristics
   - such as a leaf or flower or fruit.
   
   Bark is not so easy to go by, nor buds, or scars, or growth habit.
   
   Leaves are the easiest to use.
   
   Start with an evergreen.
   
   There are very few native evergreen broad-leaved trees in the U.S.
   
   This magnolia with its large glossy evergreen leaves in the South is a dead giveaway: , The tulip tree with its huge vertical trunk and papery upright flowers, that remain all through the winter, is very common and easy to identify (the 'flowers' are the remains of the fruit axis, not actually blooms).
   
   It gives the tree a candelabra effect. ,, A peach, a cherry, a plum, a hawthorn, a juneberry, a pear, are all in the same family, with edible fruit
   - the rose.
   
   Trees with pods are in the legume, (or bean) family, such as silk tree, mesquite and locust.
   
   There are not that many different tree families in any temperate region of the world
   - if you can group your trees in their respective families you'll be better able to understand them, and know their characteristics.
   
   Beech and oak and chestnut are all in the same family (the beech), and produce edible nuts.
   
   Cottonwood is really a gigantic member of the willow family, growing beside water and having deeply fissured bark, just like other willows.
   
   And the tulip tree is in the magnolia family
   - it has large showy flowers, just like magnolia, and look at a comparison of the fruit: , Hackberries are in the elm family, and both the seed and flesh of the prolific berries is edible
   - they're much like candy, and can persist on the tree deep into winter in some varieties and locales:
   Or the flaky peeling bark of this river birch: , The scarlet flowers stand out beautifully against the smooth gray bark.
   
   Red maple's twigs are also red.
   
   Its red keys typically don't last that far into winter: ,, . . there are also old woody capsules from the previous year's fruit: ,, . . and often holding on to their cones, such as the tiny 1/2" cones on this hemlock: , There's an incredible amount of information about various tree species online, as well as lots of images
   - you should arrive at a dead certainty about the identification of your tree at this point.
   
   You will also find a wealth of anecdotal information, as well as what possible uses the tree has and any toxic or edible parts.
   
   Always cross-reference and verify from multiple sources the edibility of a certain tree
   - don't go by one opinion alone.
   
   That having been said, there are very few trees in the U.S. that are actually poisonous, such as buckeye and yew. , Ultimately you'll create your own database of area trees, and become an expert.
   
   It will become an excellent reference source for you year after year, and you will come to know your trees from all angles, in all habitats, in all seasons. , This is a great project for kids, and it spurs their interest in trees.
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   Step 3: if you're a novice.

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   Step 4: Go for a walk

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   Step 5: and take some guides with you.

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   Step 6: Focus on trees that stand out

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   Step 7: rather than going methodically from tree to tree.

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   Step 8: Look for leftover growth up in the branches.

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   Step 9: Look for short spiny spur branches

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    Step 10: the sure mark of a plum

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    Step 11: pear or apple - a fruiting tree in the rose family:

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    Step 12: Learn your families

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    Step 13: rather than isolating trees by species.

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    Step 14: Look for very peculiar bark

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    Step 15: such as the warty trunk of this hackberry

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    Step 16: common along river bottoms (though different varieties can also be found on mountaintops).

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    Step 17: Look for anything flowering

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    Step 18: even in the dead of winter (especially in the American South)

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    Step 19: such as this silverberry

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    Step 20: with its silver-speckled foliage

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    Step 21: flowers

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    Step 22: and immature fruit: Red maple (acer rubrum) is usually the first tree to flower in the spring - in the American South that's in February.

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    Step 23: Look for leftover fruit

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    Step 24: as it can sometimes remain far into the winter

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    Step 25: like on this ornamental crabapple: Or the cherries on this laurelcherry

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    Step 26: a southern native

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    Step 27: still not yet ripe:

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    Step 28: Search for trees with giant buds

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    Step 29: such as the upright rack of huge velvety buds on this Princess-tree

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    Step 30: a common weed tree .

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    Step 31: Look for trees still holding on to their dead leaves throughout the winter

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    Step 32: a common habit of beech:

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    Step 33: Don't forget the conifers

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    Step 34: almost always evergreen

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    Step 35: with easily identifiable needles .

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    Step 36: Use the internet

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    Step 37: where possible

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    Step 38: to finish the identification process.

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    Step 39: Take photos

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    Step 40: and save them in a file with both the label of the tree and time of year the picture was taken.

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    Step 41: Collect samples

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    Step 42: and put them in a scrapbook.

Detailed Guide

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