How to Identify Your Trees

Luke Werner from Davey's North Pittsburgh office shares how you can learn how to identify the different types of trees in your yard.

In this episode we cover:  

• Looking at the big picture (0:53)
• Conifer Trees (1:33)
• Deciduous trees (1:53)
• How Luke learned to ID trees (2:03)
• The shape of your tree (2:40)
• Leaves (3:55)
  • Evergreen leaves (4:05)
  • Deciduous leaves (4:48)
  • MADcap buck (5:28)
  • Simple leaves (6:32)
  • Compound leaves (6:44)
• Do most homeowners know their trees? (8:01)
• Dawn Redwoods (10:04)
• Trees Luke likes to plant (11:40)
• How Luke became an arborist (14:30)
• Bark (16:50)
• Other tree identifications (17:25)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.  

To learn more about which trees are in your yard check our tree identification blog series.

To learn more about how you can id your trees check out our blog, How To Tell What Type Of Tree I Have.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you! 

Transcript

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists, share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more, because here at The Talking Trees Podcast, we know trees are the answer. This week, I'm joined by Luke Werner. He is a district manager at the North Pittsburgh office. Luke and I do some radio stuff together. I've done some video stuff together, but to my surprise, he's never been on the podcast before. I thought we had talked before, Luke.

Luke Werner: Yes, I know. Like you said, we've done some of that other stuff together, but I don't think I've ever been on the podcast with you.

Doug: Welcome aboard. Today we're talking all about tree identification. For the homeowner, how do you guide them as to figuring out what's what?

Luke: There's a lot of different ways or things you can look at to determine what type of tree you might have on your property. Ultimately, everything starts out a little bit farther away. You're not always-- don't run up to the tree and start looking at the little things. Just step back, look at the big picture first. The first thing is, what area are you in? Here I'm in Western Pennsylvania, so I know most of the trees I'm going to look at aren't going to be a palm tree.

Eliminate those trees that don't live where you're at. From afar, look at the first things like, is it a coniferous tree or is it a deciduous tree? Conifers have cones. Most of the time they have needles or maybe scale-like evergreen plants, right? These are trees that don't drop their leaves in the fall. Deciduous trees do drop their leaves in the fall. Those are the two large classifications of trees. There's many beyond that, but those are the first couple of things that you would look at.

Doug: When did you figure out what was what? Did you do this as a kid? Did you know the difference between a red maple and another type of maple? Or did that come with your profession?

Luke: The subspecies came with my profession, but growing up, I knew this was an oak, this was a maple, a dogwood, all those common plants. As I got into forestry classes in school, and specifically dendrology, which is a science of plant identification, that's when you really hash out what's what.

Doug: We've looked from afar. Now, what do we do when we get closer?

Luke: Like I said, figure out if it's an evergreen or a deciduous tree. Those deciduous trees drop leaves in the fall, have their traditional-looking leaves. They also have fruit or flowers. Where the evergreens and conifers are primarily needles and have cones. After that you can-- you're still far away from the tree, you're looking at it. Maybe you look at the form or the shape of it. Is it a pure middle shape? Is it a vase shape, or columnar, or oval, round? All those different things can start to put you in the direction and category of what type of tree it may be.

What you're trying to do is you're trying to cross off things off the list that it is not and continue looking at things that it is, or things that it's grouping with. After I determine if it is an evergreen or a deciduous tree, and I look at the shape, maybe I'll walk up a little bit closer. Everybody, I think probably looks at the leaves first because that's one of the best signs and best things you can look at for a tree. When you go up to it, if it is-- let's pretend it's an evergreen, okay?

We walk up to it, it has needles. Now, are those needles in a bundle or a fascicle, it's called? Are they bundled together or are they each on their own and single on the stem? Oftentimes, that can separate furs and spruces with pines. Once you even separate that, if we were to run down the pine tract, how many needles are in each bundle? Some plants have three, some plants have two, and some have five like white pines, which are really common for us.

Going through those leaves, if it was a deciduous tree, you can look at its then branching structure. If it is opposite or alternate-leafed plants, opposite means there are leaves growing directly opposite of each other on the leaf. Alternate means there's one coming off here, you go down the limb a little bit, there's another leaf going off there. That's a way to categorize the leaves. Only certain species of leaves have opposite branching. In dendrology, I remember it was called MADCap buck.

It was the shortcut on plants that have alternate-- oh I'm sorry, plants that have opposite branching. Think of MAD, M-A-D, that's maple, ash, dogwood. Cap stands for the Caprifoleacae family. There's a lot of viburnums, honeysuckle in there. Then buck was short for buckeye or horse chestnut. If you go up to a plant and you see it has opposite branching, that was always a nice shortcut to jump to certain plants. Then you could break down within those species what it may be.

It really helped identify those plants. If we're talking about leaves, the deciduous trees and say it's alternate, right? It doesn't fall into that opposite leaf category. There's a couple of different types of leaves we have. We have simple and compound leaves. Simple leaves are that of an oak or a maple. One leaf looks like one leaf. That's what people traditionally think of when they think of a leaf. Compound leaves are a bunch of leaflets, together form one leaf.

Things like locusts, walnuts, hickory, ash. Where a leaf falls, where it comes off of the branch, it has multiple leaves on that. Other types of leaves on plants are-- or other types of compound leaves, there are palmately compounds. If you take your hand and you open up your hand, and you're looking at your palm and you have all your fingers, right? You have five fingers coming off, there are leaves that are shaped like that. I always remember palmately, palm of your hand.

Those are those horse chestnuts and buckeyes or different types of palmately compound leaves versus pinnately compound, which is your ash trees and locusts and walnuts. Those are the ones that are on a long stem in a row all coming off of each other, not coming off of a centrical, or center point.

Doug: Do homeowners normally know in a basic form what they've got? They'll know like, "Hey, I've got this oak." It's certainly, probably everyone knows a maple or does it just vary from property to property?

Luke: Yes, it varies greatly from property to property in different homeowners. Everybody knows the maple leaf. I think that's probably the most common or most recognizable leaf just because it's used on a lot of different symbols. Everybody seems to think they have an oak tree all the time. I don't know why, but it's, "Oh, I have this oak in the front," or, "I have this." I think it's a type of tree that they know, so they go to that or any big tree is an oak tree.

It's fun to be able to help individuals identify them. Teach them the different ways that you can go through this and figure out what it may be, and pointing out different characteristics. Leaves aren't-- sometimes you have to identify trees when there aren't any leaves in the wintertime. There's different ways to look at it that way, but different characteristics in the bark, buds can be different. A leaf scars, which is where the leaf comes off of the stem, all of those things have their own type of fingerprint and can help identify the trees.

Doug: You've been here, you've seen it, I've got all these oaks, but it took me a long time and I needed advice from guys like you and what the difference between the oaks are. Why is this one hanging onto its leaves longer? Then when I first moved in here, I was really confused by a dawn redwood. I was like, "What is this thing?" Talk a little bit about that dawn redwood and identifying it because that one drops its needles, but it looks like a conifer in the summer.

Luke: It does, yes. That's a deciduous evergreen, like you said, meaning an evergreen or a needle plant that drops its needles annually. Those are very confusing for a lot of homeowners. It almost seems like when someone buys a house and they have a dawn redwood or a bald cypress, either they're both very similar in which they have needles that they drop each year. I can't tell you how many times I've been called out to a house to, "Hey, I need a price to remove this pine tree that died."

We just bought the house in the summer and of course, first winter we have to remove this tree because nobody's usually accustomed to an evergreen dropping its needles. You're able to go out and show them and tell them that, "Hey, everything's okay. This is normal, it's going to push out new needles next year and start all over." Yes, if I had a spot in my yard for one of those, I would love to have a bald cypress.

Doug: Luke, it's my favorite tree on the property. It was here when I got here, 100-foot tall. I often tell the story on the podcast how we first moved in here and my kid was in eighth grade and you know what kind of climbing tree a dawn redwood is, it's like a ladder. Looking up about 50 feet in the air and having a heart attack seeing my kid up there. Since we're talking about favorites and we always have the caveat right tree, right place, are there a couple things in your arsenal when you find the right spot for them that don't get planted as much as you would like to see them in landscapes? Is there anything that comes to mind?

Luke: I really like elm trees. They're some of my favorite species. I like the history of them. I like large trees. I lean in that direction to those oaks and elms and trees that have the capabilities of getting large and living a long time. With living a long time I say elm, everybody might think a Dutch elm disease, but there are a lot of new hybrids elm cultivars that are more resilient to Dutch elm disease than a lot of the newer ones.

It's a tree that can require a fair amount of space if you put it in the full sun, especially the American elm cultivars. If you have that space and you're able to put one in, it has a very nice vase-shaped tree. It can get very large, they can get very wide. They're probably one of my personal favorite shade trees. I do like them a lot. You have a favorite tree other than the bald cypress to your house?

Doug: Well, what I've been doing since I've been doing this podcast is that I've been adding natives as the oak forest is in decline, which is really a pain, Luke. I'm putting in natives. I really love my American hornbeam. Sometimes I guess they call it muscle wood. Is that right?

Luke: It is. That's an easy way to identify that plant.

Doug: Yes, by the bark. Another one on my property I really love is the Shagbark Hickories. I have a lot of those. I'm trying to diversify as much as I can in the forest because of everything that happened over the last century with new diseases and new pests, it's just good to have a lot of different things in the forest.

Luke: Yes, certainly when you start to have a monoculture or many of the same species on your property or in a forest when you do have these pests that come through, be it insects, disease, or whatever it may be it can change the landscape and really wipe things out like a wave going through a property and with that biodiversity and with diversifying those species of trees that you have, you're not going to be impacted by that as much.

Doug: Let's talk a little bit about how you got into this. I'm interested always when I'm talking to arborist, what led him in that direction?

Luke: Well, in high school, I wasn't really sure that I wanted to go to college. My dad wanted me to go at least try out a year. He had gone to college and got a degree. I went to a community college and got an associate's degree in park and recreation. I wasn't thrilled with the seasonality of that career or of that path, but I took one, it was like a Forestry 101 class, and it was really the first time that I went to school and enjoyed it and looked forward to class.

It always seemed like that class, I don't know what it was, maybe an hour and 15 minutes long or something like that, but it went by so fast. It will end, and I was like, "Oh man, I really wish the class was longer." I just really enjoyed that Forestry 101 class. I looked in the closest universities that offered a bachelor's degree in forestry were Penn State, West Virginia, and Syracuse. I had a lot of family that went to Penn State and I wasn't overly interested in that.

I went to WVU and got my bachelor's in forestry and worked for the University Forest a little bit and worked for division of forestry in West Virginia and just really enjoyed that. Then ultimately ended up here in Pittsburgh more on an urban forestry end. I went to school for forest resource management and timber production and managing these large tracks of land that you might have hundreds of thousands of trees to manage.

Now with the urban forestries, you're going into someone's property that they may have five trees, but you still look at it the same. You still have to build a plan. The forestry plan might not be as large, but you need to build a plan and recommendations to care for their trees, whether they have 101.

Doug: Back to tree ID, is there something we haven't covered yet that we need to talk about when we're trying to figure out what's growing in our property?

Luke: Well, we covered bark a little bit. There's obviously different bark textures. There's papery bark like a paper birch, smooth bark, like an American beach. There's different ridges on barks. Some are divided, they might have horizontal cracks in them where other bark like a red oak would have uninterrupted ridges that run all the way up and down the tree past bark, looking at smaller things. As you get closer to the tree, you have your flowers. You can have different colors of flowers, different shape.

Maybe the timing that they come out can be a clue on what species it is. If everybody seems to know is that first flower of the year, everybody always knows what forsythia looks like and it's yellow, and that's not super common. That's something that a lot of homeowners already know how to identify based off color and timing. Cones on evergreen trees could be one just like fruit on deciduous trees. Underneath both of those, there's different kinds of cones and there's different kinds of fruit.

Cones can be different sizes, different shapes, they can have different colors. The balsam fir has a very unique cone instead of hanging down. Most people think of a traditional pine cone or spruce cone hangs down. Balsam firs are upright when they stand on end on top of the limb and they have a very unique color or bluish purple. There's some trees like that that you can identify right off the bat by one thing almost where maybe an oak tree takes a little bit different tactics to find that specific species.

Under fruit, you can have acorns that come off oak trees. You can have other types of nuts like hickories or beaches. They have nuts, but they ultimately look different. The outside of a beach nut looks shaggy and furry, where the outside of a lot of hickories are more smooth. Different fruits, everybody knows what they call helicopters come off their maple trees, but those are samaras and that's a way you can identify some of those trees. Some have the fruit are pods, like a snap pea would be from your garden, maybe like locusts, redbuds, or Northern Catalpa.

Those are all trees that have that type of fruit. There's ones that have almost ball-type fruit like London plane trees, American sycamore, sweet gums, they have ball-type fruit, but even if you got to that ball-type fruit and weren't sure which one it was, you look at a couple of pictures, that the sycamore and London plane trees are a very smooth ball-type fruit where a sweet gum is the total opposite. It's a very spiky-looking ball.

As you go down the list, from looking at a tree from afar to going up close to a tree, you're always narrowing things down more and more. You look at the leaves, you look at the bark, you look at the fruit, and eventually, you will get to where process of elimination, you'll figure it out.

Doug: I'm going to leave it right there. Luke, that's great stuff. Next time you're here, you're going to have to help me ID a couple of trees though to get specifically what type of-- I know the main, like I know an oak, I know a maple. I want to know the exact variety that it is. Not variety, but I don't know what I'm thinking there.

Luke: Subspecies.

Doug: Yes, subspecies. Thanks again. We'll be talking soon, I'm sure, on the radio, and I'm sure we'll talk here again. Appreciate your time.

Luke: Sounds good, Doug. Thank you for having me.

Doug: Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees Podcast. From the Davey Tree Expert Company, I am your host, Doug Oster. Do me a big favor, subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss one of these fun shows. Do you have an idea for a show or maybe a comment? Send me an email to podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S at D-A-V-E-Y dot com. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees Podcast. Trees are the answer.

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