Tree identification trip to Lock 7, August 28, 2010

I went to Lock 7 to work on tree identification.  I found:

• white pine
• gray birch
• hickory
• red oak

I spent a long time trying to figure out what kind of hickory it was, and hypothesized bitternut, but that may be wrong.

On the drive back, from the car I observed weeping willow and catalapa.

The notes that I took from the books I was using (Petrides, George A., and Peterson, Roger Tory.  A Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs: Northeastern and North-Central United States and Southeastern and South-Central Canada) while I was working on identification:

Pine

White - 5 needles
Pitch - 3 needles
Jack - 2 needles.  Not found here, found farther north.  Small tree, short needles.
Scotch - 2 needles. Imported.
Austrian - 2 needles.  Cultivated.
Red, Norway - 2 needles.  Tall tree.  Needles 4-6". 

Birch

Paper, American white - only tree with peeling bark.  Saplings brownish, older trees white.  Horizontal stripes.
Gray - chalky white bark, many dark chevrons
Sweet, black, cherry - brown or black bark.  Broken twigs have wintergreen odor.
Yellow - Bark shiny yellow to silver gray, peeling, horizontal lines.  Grows with sweet birch and hemlock.  Wintergreen odor weaker than sweet birch.
River - shaggy bark.  On streambanks.  Bark of young trees  is smooth and red-brown.  Bark of older trees is orange and peeling.  Near black plates on trunk.

Hickory with 7-9 leaflets

• Shellbark - end bugs 1/2-1", hair, with overlapping scales.  Twigs stout, orange-brown, hairless or slightly hairy.  Bark shaggy, long strips.  Twigs pale orange.
• Mockernut - Leave undersides and twigs matted woolly.  Twigs stout.  End buds 5/8-1" with overlapping scales.  Bark tight and deeply furrowed.  Twigs red-brown, woolly.

Oak

• Red/black
  
  1. Leaves with hairlike bristle tips.
  2. Acorn shells have hairy inner surface.
  3. Acorns take two years to mature.
     
• White
  
  1. Leaves lack bristle tips.
  2. Hairless inner acorn shells.
  3. Acorns mature in one year.
     
• White oaks have lighter bark.
• Red oak acornds are usually inedible; some white oak acorns edible.
• Chestnut oaks: a type of white oak with inedible acorns, and dark, deeply ridged bark.
• Eastern US has 13 species white and 21 species red.
• Not all oaks have the characteristic lobed leaves.