Tree ID - Bark

bark is dark gray, and it becomes thick and furrowed as it gets older.

Yellow Poplar

The bark of this tree varies according to its age. Young has a silvery gray bark, with light reddish- brown patches. Older trees have dark reddish- brown bark, sometimes almost black.

Birch

With age, the smooth bark becomes scaly then flaky, and takes on a dark silvery-gray to almost black coloration. It is one of the easiest trees to identify in the forest, especially in winter, when its black flaky bark is easily seen from a distance

Black Cherry

This light gray-brown bark is characterized by having deep, narrow ridges that form a diamond shaped pattern.

Ash

develops flattened ridges with intervening furrows, having a gray-brown coloration. Ridges may be straight on younger bark, but may interlace on mature bark.

Elm

Bark of young trees is smooth, gray or reddish brown, and thin, sometimes with resin Some trunks may reach 12 inches diameter or more before the bark begins to split. On large mature trees the bark may be faded gray to gray-black, or pale brown to dark brown, furrowed into long, thick solid or scaly ridges with an interwoven appearance.

Douglas Fir

Twigs are scaly and orange-red, while immature bark on young trees is flaky to scaly and orange- red to red-brown in color. On older trees, the bark is platy with a darker red-brown color.

Red Pine

With maturity, the lower trunk retains more of its plates each year, creating a mosaic of gray, green, and brown patches that contrast with the decreasing amount of white inner bark.

Sycamore

The gray-green bark remains relatively smooth for a number of years, until it finally begins to develop furrows and ridges that are dark gray to dark brown. Sap drippings from the bark are often a common sight and turn white upon exposure to air.

White Pine

The bark is this tree’s trademark, being steel gray in color and very smooth and thin, even on old trees. It is frequently vandalized by people who like to carve their initials on the trunk, since the smooth bark will not obscure the graffiti, even decades after the carving. The trunk flares more at its base than most other trees, and transitions to the shallow root system.

Beech

Young bark is smooth and a shiny light gray, whereas mature wood is lightly fissured and medium gray to brown, with darker furrows. Ridges are usually flattened and either straight vertical or interlacing, and often brightly reflect the winter sunlight.

Basswood

goes from having white-gray smooth bark with dark longitudinal fissures to white- creamy bark with large black horizontal bands, to furrowed and ridged, dark gray bark at the base of the trunk.

Bigtooth Aspen

The scaly mature bark is gray to brown, and is often speckled with dried white resin that drips from bark blisters and pruned limbs.

Spruce

The mature bark of is thin and often shredding into thin strips. Exposure of the inner bark (such as rubbing by velvet- antlered bucks in late summer) reveals a bright orange color beneath the exterior light-brown to faded- gray outer bark.

Cedar

The mature bark displays great variation in the wild. In terms of texture, it may be lightly fissured, platy, or shaggy, with the color of its outer plates composed of gray, silver, brown, and black shades. Its inner bark may be tinted with orange hues.

Red Maple

As the bark matures, it develops shiny gray flattened ridges that have intervening darker fissures. Only on very aged specimens does the lowermost portion of the trunk have deep furrows and tall ridges with a dark gray to near-black color.

Red Oak

Bark color ranges from gray to brown, with olive green tints. Smooth branchlets soon become fissured into crisscrossing flat ridges, which become tall, sinewy-like ridges on mature bark, separated by deep furrows.

Locust

Its mature bark is different than any other Oak, having ridges that are triangular in cross- section, with deep furrows in- between. Even with age, it retains the light gray to medium gray color of its bark that is characteristic

Chestnut Oak

trees are smooth in their young bark, without a hint of corkiness. Mature bark is deeply ridged and furrowed, with a gray- brown coloration.

Sweet Gum

Ashy gray to whitish in color Platy and similar to some species of hickory Commonly develops more limbs than it’s relatives

White Oak

The mature bark is dark gray to near black, moderately to deeply ridged and furrowed, supposedly with an inner bark that is subtilely yellow or orange.

Black Oak

The bark is flaky when young, but usually becomes ridged and deeply furrowed with age, forming a diamondback pattern as the ridges interlace. Sometimes, the bark alternatively becomes platy with age. Bark color is brown-gray to gray-black, and may serve as another reason that contributes to its common name.

Black Walnut

The young bark is smooth and gray like most Magnolias, but the mature gray bark is deeply furrowed with tall but flattened ridges.

Cucumber

bark that starts out as fairly smooth on young branches, becomes very flaky on young trunks, and then transitions to prominent fissures and wide, flattened ridges with maturity, having a brown to brown-gray coloration. Even in old age, some continue to have branches and foliage to the ground, hiding their trunks and bark.

Hemlock

As its relatively thin bark matures, it becomes moderately ridged and shallowly furrowed, with the dark gray to gray- brown color that is characteristic

Scarlet Oak

Mature bark is broken into irregularly shaped plates that are covered with thin, reddish scales -- often thinner and lighter-colored than that of old loblolly pine. Small surface pits or holes in the outer bark scales are a unique feature of this tree.

Shortleaf Pine

gray, thick, rough and deeply furrowed

Cottonwood