Learning to recognize trees at a glance

I know the trees on the hill are maples: silver, sugar, Norway, and sycamore on the hill, and red at the top of the hill.  I don't usually think a whole lot about which is which, though for the most part it is obvious.  Today I looked at these three:

Now I know that the tree off to the right (not in the picture) is a sugar maple, and I don't think it's the only sugar maple, but I think it's largely silver maples over on the side where this picture was taken. And in general, I think the ones with shaggy bark are silver maple. But with one casual glance, today it struck me that the tree that is in the center of the above photo is a sugar maple. This is the same thing that I was noticing yesterday at Lock 7. Trees I once struggled to identify are now recognizable at a glance. Of course, there are lots of trees I still struggle to identify.

To confirm my flash of insight, I checked for flowers. At this time, the silver maples have flowers while the sugar maples do not. Checking the flowers confirmed my flash of recognition.

Last year, on March 24, 2011 I looked at these same trees and concluded that the center one was a sugar maple. But last year, I looked at the flowers and then drew the conclusion based on the flowers.  This year, I just recognized it by the way the trunk of the tree looked.

At Lock 7

Today at Lock 7 I saw some trees that I visited early in my days of tree study, on August 28, 2010.   Now, I can see at a glance, even with no leaves on the trees, that there are cottonwood, Norway maple, and aspen, all trees I did not recognize in 2010.  Okay, well I don't know for sure that it's an aspen.  I have not studied the books thoroughly to positively identify it, but it is a tree that I see often and recognize.  Here's a picture of one that I took not at Lock 7, but at the bike path.

The one pictured below and several others appeared to me to be obviously Norway maples. I didn't check the buds. Just seeing the trunk and branches from a distance, I thought they looked like Norway maples. I remember, in my early days of of tree identification, I was so frustrated because I could not tell the difference between a Norway maple and a sugar maple.  It's nice to realize that I have made progress.

The white pine I did recognize in 2010.  That's a tree I've known all my life.  It was good to see it, and to smell it.  We don't seem to have as many pines around here as they do in New England.

I also took a look at a spruce.  I have not yet gotten very much into distinguishing different types of spruce.  That's something I should study in the future.

And like the spruce, this is one that I know generally but not specifically. It's one of those cedar type things.

Sunlight sparkles on twigs like ice

The trees sparkled so much in the sunlight, it was almost as if they had ice on them. But no ice, it was in the 60's today.

What kind of maple?

Didn't this tree have the fall foliage of a sugar maple? Doesn't it look like a red maple now?

Oak twig

Oaks are easily recognized by their leaves, even in winter, because leaves cling to them through winter.  But once I've recognized something as an oak, that does not mean it's time to stop looking.  There is still much to be learned.  I recognized this tree as an oak by the leaves, but then I took a look at the twig, so I could learn what an oak twig looks like.

Red maple buds and flowers

I think these are all red maples. I'm pretty sure about the first two photos, the ones that are still buds,  since these photos are from a tree I have watched throughout the seasons.

These flowers are on smaller trees which I have not identified in other seasons.  It seems to me that the twigs and buds from which the flowers have emerged in the photos below match the buds in the above photos.

Why have these trees flowered before the other red maples? The trees that have flowered seem to be younger than the trees that are still showing buds.  Do younger trees flower earlier?

Or are these flowers not really red maples? Silver maples have been flowering for a month.  In The Sibley Guide to Trees, the picture of silver maple flowers looks similar to the picture of the red maple flowers.  However, the  flowers that I see on the silver maple trees look different.  So I'll stick with the theory that these are red maple flowers.

According to The Sibley Guide to Treees, on red maples, usually female flowers are red and male flowers are yellow, so the ones in the photo must be male.

According the the Wikipedia entry about red maples, the flowers are red and "The tree itself is considered Polygamodioecious, meaning some individuals are male, some female, and some monoecious."

Buds on Hutton Street

Trees have buds throughout the winter, but with the coming of spring, buds are growing larger and more noticeable, as if swelling with pregnancy.

This is not a tree I visit frequently, so I don't know if the buds look different now than they did in winter, but here is one of many trees whose buds caught my attention.

This tree is on Hutton Street, near 17th Street. There were two small trees, planted on the sidewalk, so they are cultivated trees. They had two buds together on the ends of the twigs, plus alternate side buds.