Category Archives: Trees

Eastern Hemlock

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Among the longest-lived species in Ohio, this conical conifer with long, slender branches drooping to the ground grows between 60 and 70 feet tall and is extremely shade tolerant.

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It may take 250 to 300 years to reach maturity and may live for 800 years or more. Many species of wildlife benefit from the excellent habitat that a dense stand of Eastern Hemlock provides.

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It is easy to identify. The distinctive, flat needles are glossy green above and pale green with two white lines below.

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This tree grows best in cool, moist locations such as the north-facing slopes and ravines in eastern Ohio.

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Eastern Hemlock has separate male and female flowers in mid-spring. The female flowers quickly develop into small green cones that hang from the tips of the new growth of twigs – here’s a photo from August.

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After the cones mature, turn brown and open to release their seeds; they may remain on the branches for several years. The cones are only about 3/4 of an inch long.

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Eastern Hemlock has bark that starts out as fairly smooth, but it eventually transitions to a textured surface with prominent fissures and wide, flattened ridges, having a brown to brown-gray coloration.

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Native Americans used the moist inner bark to create a paste to treat wounds and sores. Even today hemlock oil, distilled from the needles and twigs, is used in liniments.

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This straight-trunked, gracefully pyramidal tree with long, pendulous limbs and short-needled, feathery branches adds color, shape and texture to the Winter landscape.

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Red Oak

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Red oak is a North American tree with spectacular reddish brown leaves in Autumn. It is a “Big Woods” forest species, typically occurring in mixed stands of elm, ash, beech and maple trees.

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Along with Pin Oak, it is also one of the few oaks that is an important shade tree in the landscape industry. It is notable for its rapid growth rate.

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Red Oak is native to rich woodland areas where it grows to 90 feet tall. Its branches and upper trunk are marked with long, light gray lines which remind some people of ski trails.

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Widespread in the eastern United States, it was long ago introduced into Europe as a landscaping tree. The Red Oak’s leaves contain tannin, a substance that makes them leathery and hinders their decomposition. At this time of the year they are dark red and fading to brown. They may remain on the tree well into Fall.

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Each leaf has 7 to 11 lobes and the tips of the lobes are bristle tipped. The sinuses (cut out areas) of the lobes are U-shaped. The leaves of saplings tend to be very shallowly lobed.

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The tough, heavy wood of this tree has a reddish-orange coloration, and is an important hardwood for the Ohio timber industry. It is used for beams, veneer, furniture and flooring.

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Its large acorns mature earlier in the season than those of most other oaks and provides a source of food by late Summer as well as Autumn and Winter for many forms of wildlife, including Blue Jays, woodpeckers, Wild Turkey, mice, squirrels, raccoon and deer.

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Ironwood

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This is a tree with a few different common names. One is Blue Beech, in reference to the blue-gray, smooth bark that looks similar to American Beech. It is also known as American Hornbeam; “horn” means “tough” and “beam” means “tree” in Old English.

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It is noted for both its interesting bark and interesting mature fruits, as well as its Fall leaf colors. When found in the open, it may reach 30 feet tall and 20 feet wide. Though I’ve seen it more frequently as understory tree in mature forests.

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The smooth gray bark is one of the most distinguishing features of this tree. It has a sinewy surface resembling a muscled arm.

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Ironwood has separate male and female flowers that emerge in early May. The resulting fruit, known as a nutlet, begins to form in late May, and is surrounded by bracts. These clusters hang downwards and are another attractive aspect of this tree.

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An additional appealing feature of Ironwood is its fall color. It turns from green to yellow to a brilliant orange in late October. After finally turning brown, the leaves tend to stay on the tree well into Winter.

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Ironwood is strong and hard, but because the tree is so small, it is rarely harvested for the manufacturing of wood products. Nevertheless, it is useful for tool handles, levers, and mallets.

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This tree provides an important food source for Gray Squirrels in bottomland hardwood forests.

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Northern Catalpa

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Northern Catalpa, native to a relatively small area of the central Mississippi Valley basin, has been extensively cultivated in Ohio for over 200 years. It is now naturalized in urban and rural areas and these days is primarily used as a large, ornamental shade tree.

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Farmers introduced Northern Catalpa to Ohio in order to produce large amounts of relatively lightweight timber for fenceposts, since its wood is very resistant to rotting. Its rapid growth rate assisted in this need, until metal fenceposts were developed and largely replaced wooden posts.

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The medium-green leaves of Northern Catalpa are large and heart-shaped. They are some of the biggest leaves on any Ohio tree.

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In Spring large, white flowers form in upright clusters from the branch tips, creating a striking floral effect. The flowers are composed of fused white petals with small amounts of yellow, orange and purple.

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Pollinated flowers produce long, vanilla bean-like pods in early Autumn. The seedpods are slender and green in the Summer and grow to 10-24 inches, looking similar to an exaggerated green bean.

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The seedpods mature in the Fall, turn dark brown and split open lengthwise to release the seeds inside.

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The size, shape and color of the mature seedpods gives rise to another common name for this plant – the “Cigar Tree.”

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Staghorn Sumac

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The common name for this tree is derived from the fine, felt-like hairs on young stems, giving them the texture of a deer’s antlers.

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“Back in the day” Native American Indians made a lemonade-like drink from its crushed fruit. And tannery workers used the tannin-rich bark and foliage as a tanning agent.

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This is a small (15-30 foot) colony-forming, tree with crooked, leaning trunks, picturesque branches and velvety twigs.

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On female plants, yellow-green flowers are followed by fuzzy, bright red berries in erect, pyramidal clusters which last throughout winter.

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Many species of birds have been observed eating the fruits of Staghorn Sumac, especially during the Winter months.

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This is one of the first trees to change color. Vibrant orange, vermilion, vivid yellow and sometimes purple may be seen all together on a single tree. I’ve noticed that the leaves on some trees start turning in late July.

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Staghorn Sumac is shade intolerant, so is most often found along the edges of forests, in forest openings, on the edges of grasslands and fields and along roadsides.

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With appealing features that can be enjoyed year-round, Staghorn Sumac is indeed a tree for all seasons.

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Tuliptree

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Back in March I noticed the remains of a structure on a tree while on a hike. The Tuliptree, found throughout Ohio, is named for the appearance of its showy flowers and the silhouette of its large leaves, both of which resemble tulips.

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In May I checked on the tree, it was forming buds and leaves. The large, alternate leaves have an unusual shape, with a large blade that is almost square, except for the wide notch on its end.

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Tuliptree is the tallest tree of eastern forests with the straightest trunks, achieving heights of well over 100 feet and diameters of 4 feet. It is frequently found in moist woodlands and edges of fields, especially on downslopes where water drains.

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I made a trip back to see this tree yesterday and it was in full bloom. Tuliptree has the largest solitary flower of any native tree in Ohio. It is characterized by six petals that are yellow-green on the outside and orange-yellow on the inside.

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While the flowers are large, they occur scattered in the fully foliaged canopy, and often only occur in the upper canopy of trees at least thirty feet tall. As such, the floral display may go unnoticed, so I considered myself pretty lucky to see this tree’s display at eye level.

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Great Basin Bristlecone Pine

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Great Basin Bristlecone pines are remarkable for their great age and their ability to survive adverse growing conditions. In fact, it seems one secret to their longevity is the environment in which most bristlecone pines grow.

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This tree most often grows where conditions are harsh, with cold temperatures, a short growing season and high winds. The examples I saw today were high atop Mount Charleston. Trees in these high-elevation environments grow very slowly and in some years don’t even add a ring of growth.

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This slow growth makes their wood very dense and resistant to insects, fungi, rot and erosion. Vegetation is very sparse, limiting the role of fire. Bristlecone pine seeds are occasionally cached by birds at lower elevations.

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While they grow more rapidly in more “favorable” environments at lower elevations, they do not achieve their legendary age or fascinating twisted shapes.

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Not only are they cool to look at, bristlecone pine is the longest lived tree species in the world — a few are known to have lived for over 5,000 years.

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I set my sights on finding a particular Bristlecone Pine in Nevada that is over 3,000 years old. The six mile round-trip hike was at times at elevations of over 11,000 feet. I finally did get to meet up with that tree.

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Eastern Redbud

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Eastern Redbud is abundant in the southern two-thirds of Ohio, with scattered distribution in the northern one-third of the state. It heralds the arrival of Spring with its showy, lavender-pink flowers that typically open in April, long before its foliage emerges.

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Like Locust Trees and Wisteria, this tree is a member of the Bean Family. By late spring, the green fruits of Eastern Redbud take on the pod shape that is characteristic of beans. The alternate, smooth-edged, heart-shaped leaves make Eastern Redbud easy to identify, even when it is not flowering.

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Eastern Redbud only reaches about 20 feet tall and 20 feet wide at maturity and is relatively short-lived. It many places it would not seem like Spring without this tree’s spectacular floral display.

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I am fortunate enough to have one of these trees blooming in my backyard right now.

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Coast Redwood

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The Coast Redwood is the world’s tallest tree. It’s hard not to think about prehistoric times when seeing their gigantic trunks. Found mostly in California, it grows in natural stands in a long, thin, coastal area along the Pacific Ocean.

Throughout the year it rains quite a lot in this thin coastal strip and it is quite foggy most of the time. Because of this, the tree can absorb enough water to survive.

Although we often think of life on the forest floor, different species of plants, lichens, salamanders and invertebrates live high up in the the complex branch systems of redwoods.

This tree provides cover for life on the forest floor as well. It sheds large slabs of thick back. Many different types of cool creatures can by found by looking under the shed bark at the foot of the tree; I found my first California snake this way.

These immense trees have delicate foliage. Narrow, three-quarter inch needles needles grow flat along their stems, creating feathery formations.

Because of the dramatic atmosphere, these redwood forests have been used as scenery in movies like Star Wars and Jurassic Park.

The world’s tallest living tree is named “Hyperion” (fans of the largest trees give them names) and is no less than 379 feet. In the most favorable parts of their range, Coast Redwoods can live more than two thousand years.

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Sycamore Tree

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In the Winter, the exfoliating bark of Sycamore Trees can look quite appealing under the January sky. The bark flakes off in great irregular masses, leaving the trunk surface mottled, and greenish-white, gray and reddish-brown.

The rigid, brittle nature of the bark tissue lacks the elasticity of the bark of some other trees, so it is incapable of stretching to accommodate the growth of the wood underneath and the tree sheds it off.

This makes for an easy tree to identify – you don’t even need to see the leaves. The camouflage-patterned bark is a feature allowing Sycamore Trees to be recognized in any season.

Growing up in Cleveland, these trees were planted by the city as “shade trees”; they lined the street that I lived on. In a natural setting they are “flood plain” inhabitants and often grow along the edges of rivers and large creeks.

This tree easily reaches heights of 80 feet tall and 60 feet wide, but can grow much larger. While not the tallest tree, is considered the most massive tree (as defined by its circumference) in the eastern United States.

The Sycamore Tree’s leaves are very large and can reach 7 to 8 inches long and wide. Here’s a leaf from last Summer.

The fruit clusters appear as hanging balls, one per stalk. The fruit hangs on all Winter, then falls apart in early Spring to disperse their many small seeds.

During this time of year, Sycamore Trees stand ghostly along river edges, with their smooth white limbs in stark contrast to the brown, textured bark of the trees that surround them.

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