Troop 261 Marble Cliff, Ohio 2008 http://www.bsatroop261.org
Leaf Characteristics White Ash Emerald Ash Borer Quaking Aspen American Beech River Birch Boxelder Buckeye Northern Catalpa Black Cherry Eastern Cottonwood Flowering Dogwood Slippery Elm Hackberry Shagbark Hickory Hophornbeam Black Locust Honey Locust Silver Maple Sugar Maple Red Mulberry Red Oak White Oak Osage Orange White Pine Red Cedar Sassafras White Spruce Sweetgum American Sycamore Tree of Heaven Tuliptree Black Walnut Black Willow
One of the more common and rapidly growing trees of forests and fields in all of Ohio, is also a popular shade tree for urban areas. From the forest, its wood is harvested to make baseball bats, tool handles, furniture, and for use as firewood. Among the ashes, its wood is considered the best.
Leaves Flowers Fruit Leaf scars after fall off Bark
Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) is an invasive, ash tree-killing insect easily moved through firewood, ash logs, ash nursery stock, and parts of an ash tree Check ash trees for the following symptoms: Distinct, D-shaped exit holes in the bark Serpentine-shaped tunnels under the bark on the surface of the wood Young sprout growth at the base of the tree Unusual activity by woodpeckers Thinning canopy of the tree Vertical splits in the bark Because of the danger of spreading this insect to more areas, you cannot transport wood across county lines
One of the most widely distributed tree in North America. In Ohio, Quaking Aspen is found abundantly in northern Ohio, but is only found locally in pockets in the southern half of the state. Quaking Aspen (also known as Popple), is a type of Poplar that forms root suckers, and thus may form a colony of trees that expands indefinitely.
Leaves Flowers Bark when Young Bark when Older
Easily recognized from a distance by its smooth, steel-gray bark and tapering surface roots at the base of its trunk, is present throughout all of Ohio. This tree is a favorite of children and teenagers who love to carve their initials onto its large smooth trunks. Many beech trees are partially hollow and provide excellent den sites for various wildlife, including squirrels, raccoons, and opossums. Its small, triangular nuts are relished by both mammals and birds in autumn.
Leaves Fruit Buds Bark
Makes its best growth alongside bodies of water or in occasionally flooded bottomlands. In Ohio, it is native mostly in the south-central counties, and sparsely along Lake Erie. However, it is widely planted throughout Ohio and the eastern United States as an ornamental shade tree, prized for its flaky, orange, ornamental bark and rippling foliage in the breeze.
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Frequents rural bottomlands and neglected urban areas. It is the only maple tree native to Ohio that has compound leaves. While it has little commercial usage or ornamental appeal today, its rapid life cycle still helps establish both shade and erosion control in marginally useful areas. The name Boxelder comes from its former usage in the manufacture of wooden crates, pallets, and boxes.
Leaves Fruit Flowers Winter Twig Bark
State tree of Ohio is found primarily as an understory tree in the western half of Ohio, where the soils are more alkaline in ph. However, it is scattered throughout the eastern half of the state, except in extreme northeastern and extreme southeastern Ohio. Its lightweight wood is used in the production of artificial limbs, and the holding of a "buckeye nut" in one's pocket is considered good luck.
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Native to a relatively small area of the central Mississippi Valley basin, has been extensively cultivated in Ohio for over 200 years, and is now naturalized in urban and rural areas, primarily used today as a large ornamental shade tree. Farmers introduced Northern Catalpa to Ohio in order to produce large amounts of relatively lightweight timber for fenceposts, since the wood is very resistant to rotting.
Leaves Flowers Fruit Winter Twig Bark
A rapidly growing woodland tree common throughout all of Ohio, is often found in open fields and previously harvested forests. Its beautiful, fine-grained, orangebrown to mahogany-colored heartwood ranks second only to Black Walnut as the ultimate choice for making solid wood furniture, interior trim, and high-quality veneer. Its small fruits are relished by birds and mammals as a food source in late summer.
Leaves Flowers Fruit Twig Bark
A type of Poplar that is present throughout all of Ohio, this is a tree native to portions of the Eastern United States, but makes its greatest impact in the Midwest, Great Plains, and south central United States. It is almost as massive as Sycamore in terms of its girth and broadspreading canopy. It frequents floodplains and river bottoms, but can also be planted in the driest of soils and survive to produce adequate shade.
Leaves Flowers Early Fruit Late Fruit Bark
Found throughout all of Ohio and the entire eastern half of the United States, this is one of the most popular ornamental trees, with fourseason appeal. Showy early spring flowers are the yearly highlight, but red fruits and crimson foliage in autumn, large floral buds and checkered bark in winter, and yearround layered branching add to its appeal.
Leaves Flowers Fruit Winter Buds Bark
This tree is similar in many ways to American Elm, but differs in its branching habit (it branches higher on the trunk, with fewer main branches), the texture of its slightly larger leaves (they are sandpapery on both sides), and the color of its interior heartwood (reddish-brown). Slippery Elm is named after its slick, mucilaginous inner bark, which was chewed by the Native Americans and pioneers to quench thirst when water was not readily available. Also known as Red Elm.
Leaves Flowers Fruit Twigs Bark
Also known as Common Hackberry, Northern Hackberry, or American Hackberry, is present throughout the upper half of the eastern United States, including almost all of Ohio. It is a tree that frequents fencerows, fields, and wastelands, and grows naturally near bodies of water, including floodplains and drainage ditches. It is easily recognizable from a distance by its light gray, warty bark on massive trunks, coupled with its rapid growth rate and large size.
Leaves Fruit Witch s Broom Cosmetic Disease Bark
A slow-growing but potentially massive tree located in all of Ohio, is frequently found in dry uplands or moist valleys in association with other hickories and oaks. Its cut timber is prized for making tool handles, athletic equipment, furniture, construction timbers, and firewood. The most distinctive feature of this tree is its shaggy bark, which peels in long, wide, thick strips from the trunk and branches
Leaves Young Bark Fruit Twigs Old Bark
The "hop" portion of its name refers to the resemblance of its fruits to those of true hops that are used in the production of beer. Hornbeam refers to a related European tree whose wood was used to yoke oxen; therefore, its American counterpart wood was also used as a "beam" with which to yoke "horned" beasts of burden. As a member of the Birch Family, it is related to the Alders, Birches, Hornbeams, and Filberts.
Leaves Young Bark Catkins Flower Mature Bark
Once native to the southern Appalachian region of the Eastern United States, this tree has now spread throughout the world, including all of Ohio. It is valuable as an aggressive, rapidly growing invader species that controls erosion. Initially colonizing by seeds, it also suckers from the roots, forming pure stands and snuffing out competitive weeds and woody plants. This olive-green wood have anti-rotting properties.
Leaves Flowers Fruit Twig Bark
Found throughout all of Ohio, being a fairly common resident of fencerows and open fields, but achieving its most favorable growth on the downslopes of streams and floodplains of rivers, where the deeper soils are moist to wet. Its fine-textured foliage makes it stand out when found next to trees with larger leaves that block more sunlight. This native of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee River Valleys has its large trunks and zigzag twigs adorned with thorns.
Leaves Flowers Fruit Twigs Bark
A tree found throughout all of Ohio, is a common shade tree in urban areas and primarily a wet site tree in rural areas. Its leaves are the most deeply indented of any type of maple, and it is named for the fact that its leaf undersides are silvery, and in a breeze the bicolor effect of dark green and silver hues is displayed in its canopy. A distinctive trait of the lower branches is that they become very pendulous yet upswept at their tips.
Leaves Flowers Fruit Young Bark Bark
A favorite shade tree with reliable fall color, found in the forests and meadows throughout all of Ohio, but flourishing in the cooler climates and more acidic soils of northeastern Ohio and Appalachia. It is valued for its hard, dense, finegrained and difficult-to-split wood, which is utilized for floors, furniture, veneer, musical instruments, and railroad ties.
Leaves Flowers Fruit Twigs Bark
A species native to the entire Eastern United States, is taller and more open and gangly than its White counterpart, achieving a height of 60 feet and a spread of 50 feet when found in the open. Both produce abundant amounts of fruits on their female trees, which serve as a source of food for wildlife in early summer, and they have a polymorphic type of leaf - that is, on the same branch, there are often multiple shapes to be seen.
Leaves Flowers Fruit Twigs Bark
A major timber tree of the eastern and Midwestern United States. The tough, heavy wood of Red Oak has a reddish-orange coloration, and is an important hardwood for the Ohio timber industry, involved in the production of beams, railroad ties, furniture, flooring, and other usages. Its large acorns mature earlier in the season than those of most other Oaks, thus providing a source of food by late summer and throughout autumn and winter for many forms of wildlife.
Leaves Twig Young Bark Fruit Flowers Mature Bark
Native to the entire eastern half of the United States, this tree is found throughout all of Ohio, in habitats ranging from dry forests and fields to mesic woodlands and down slopes. The undersides of its leaves are white-green, and its wood is a light-colored beige that is almost white when freshly cut. One of the most important hardwoods, with its hard, heavy, tough wood used as lumber for beams, railroad ties, flooring, barrels, furniture, and many other uses.
Leaves Twig Fruit Flowers Bark
A tree commonly seen in rural areas where it frequents fields and fencerows. Its usage as a large hedge tree in a row planting and the softball-sized fruits of female trees give it the alternative common name of Hedge Apple. The Osage Indians of the southern Great Plains and the resemblance of its fruits to limecolored oranges give it the more common name of Osage Orange. Commercially, its very strong wood is used to make the best bows for archery.
Leaves Twig Fruit Flowers Bark
An evergreen conifer, is today widely distributed throughout eastern North America, including all of Ohio. Today, it is logged for the production of lumber, creosotesoaked telephone poles, and as pulp for the production of paper. White Pine is commonly transplanted today as a landscape evergreen tree, and is also sold as a cut Christmas tree.
Needles Flower Cone Twigs Bark
This is the most common evergreen conifer found throughout the entire state, and it is valuable as a large shrub or small tree that will thrive where few other woody plants will grow. Its aromatic heartwood is lavendar-red in color, and is prized for making cedar chests, closet wood lining, cedar shavings, small carvings, pencils, and non-rotting fence posts. It serves as an excellent windbreak and erosion control shrub in nature.
Needles Flower Fruit Twigs Bark
Native to the entire eastern half of the United States, including all of Ohio. However, it is most frequent in the acidic soils of southeastern Ohio, and predominates in more southern states with warmer winters. Sassafras is a rapidly growing colonizer, and forms thickets primarily by root sprouts several feet away from the parent plant. Oil of Sassafras can be distilled from the trunk bark or roots for use in perfuming soaps, while Sassafras tea is made by boiling the bark of roots.
Leaves Flower Fruit Twigs Bark
An evergreen conifer, is found throughout Ohio as a planted ornamental, primarily in two forms. The regular tree form has bluegreen needles and serves as a slower-growing alternative to the blue-needled Colorado, functioning either as a solitary specimen or as a group windbreak. The compact, miniature tree form, known as Dwarf Alberta Spruce, is one of the most common dwarf conifers planted, having a perfect spire shape and very slow growth rate.
Leaves Flower Cones Smaller Ornamental Bark
Native to the lower two-thirds of the Eastern United States and parts of Mexico, is only found naturally in Ohio in its southernmost counties, but is planted throughout most of the state as a shade tree prized for its brilliant fall colors and rapid growth. The name Sweetgum comes from the taste of its hardened sap that bleeds from wounds on the tree. The hard-to-split wood is used as veneer and stained other colors to mimic other types of wood.
Leaves Twig Fruit Flower Bark
While not the tallest tree, is considered the most massive tree, as defined by its circumference, in the entire eastern half of the United States, where is it native including all of Ohio. This species is easily identified by its height, its spreading canopy with several massive branches, and its white bark in winter. The paths of creeks and rivers can be easily seen from a distance in winter by following the white bark of barren Sycamore canopies.
Leaves Twig Fruit Flower Bark
A native of China, was brought to this country in the early 1800's as a source of food for silkworms, which were simultaneously imported from the Orient. Although raising silkworms was a failure, the Tree-of- Heaven remained, and while it escapes to the wild on occasion, it predominates in urban areas, and thrives in disturbed and neglected sites where polluted conditions and poor, rocky soils prohibit anything but weeds to grow.
Leaves Flower Fruit Twig Bark
Found throughout all of Ohio, is named for the appearance of its showy flowers and the silhouette of its large leaves, both of which resemble tulips. It is also known as Tulip Poplar and Yellow Poplar, in reference to the fluttering of its leaves like those of the Poplars, and for the yellow colors of both its flowers and fall foliage. Its lightweight wood, often used as a base for veneer, is straight-grained, relatively soft for a hardwood, and has a faded olive-green color.
Leaves Flower Fruit Twig Bark
A rapidly growing tree common in all of Ohio, is found everywhere due to squirrels burying its nuts. Its beautiful, fine-grained, chocolatebrown, relatively lightweight heartwood is the ultimate choice for making solid wood furniture, interior trim, gunstocks, and high-quality veneer. The large nut contained beneath the husks of Black Walnut is round and can be cracked open to expose the bittersweet, oily, and highly nutritious kernel.
Leaves Flower Twig Fruit Nuts Bark
Native to the entire eastern half of North America, and encompasses all of Ohio in its distribution. It is the most common Willow in Ohio, abundantly found around rivers and swampy or marshy areas. It is one of the few Willows with stipules that encircle the stems, and it is named for the black bark that is found on mature trunks. As an ornamental, it can even be planted as a finetextured shade tree, as it tolerates dry soils with reduced vigor.
Leaves Flower Fruit Twig Bark
We want to thank all of the resources on the web for all of the material inserted here. Most of the detail came from: Ohio Department of Natural Resources What Tree is It? Dendrology at Virginia Tech Vanderbuilt BioImages Site Google Images