Fox Hills 4 th Grade

The oaks are among our most important trees. Besides giving beauty and shade, they are our most valuable timber trees. Their bark is rich in tannin, which is used in tanning leather. Their fruit, called acorns, is food for many animals. You have probably heard the expression “as strong as an oak”. Oaks are the symbol of strength. The wood is hard and durable and their roots go deep. The Gambel Oak is the most common Oak found in Utah. It is a small tree which covers the rocky mountains and foot hills. It is often found in thickets or groves. It can be from 20 to 70 feet high. The leaves are lobed, shiny, dark green in summer and turn reddish and yellow in autumn. The acorns are eaten by wild turkeys, squirrels and other wildlife. They have a sweetish flavor. The wood is used mainly for fence posts and fuel.

This tree is also called the “Ashleaf Maple” and the “Manitoba Maple”. It has compound leaves. It is great for shade and windbreaks but is short lived and easily broken in storms. It is considered a weed tree by some. Indians made sugar from the sap.

The most common sumac of Utah. The tree has a whitish sap. The raw young sprouts were eaten by the Indians as salad. The sour fruit, which is mostly seed, can be chewed to quench thirst or prepared as a drink similar to lemonade. Deer browse the twigs and fruit throughout the year. In the autumn the leaves turn a brilliant scarlet color.

This group of trees are together because they all have fruit that is edible for man. They are not only survival food but make into jams, jellies, or preserves. Blue Elderberry Black Hawthorn Western Serviceberry Wild Apple American Plum Western Chokecherry

The sweetish, edible berries are used in preserves and pies. Lewis and Clark first reported Blue Elder as an “alder with pale, sky blue berries”. Whistles can be made by removing the pith from the twigs. Indians made flutes in a similar fashion. A remedy for fever has been concocted from the bark. Blue Elder is planted as an ornamental for the numerous whitish flowers and bluish fruits. It is found along streams.

This species is a handsome ornamental with showy white flowers, glossy foliage, and odd, shiny black fruits. It is named for its discoverer David Douglas. Cattle and sheep browse the foliage, pheasants, partridges, quail, and other birds consume the berries. The berries are sweetish and not too juicy. Hawberries are not a favorite but were used by the pioneers in jams and pies. They are a good survival food.

The fruits of this and related species are eaten fresh prepared in puddings, pies and muffins, and dried like raisins and currants. They are also an important food for wildlife from songbirds to squirrels and bears. Deer and livestock browse the foliage. The serviceberry tree is small with several trunks. It has star-shaped white flowers. The fruits are about a half inch in diameter like a small apple, purple or blackish, juicy and sweet with several seeds.

This is a familiar tree that has been naturalized to Utah. It has showy pink-tinged blossoms and delicious red fruit. The apple has been cultivated since ancient times. Numerous improved varieties have been developed from this “wild” apple and hybrids with related species. For nearly fifty years Jonathan Chapman ( ), better known as Johnny Appleseed, traveling mostly on foot, distributed apple seeds to everybody he met. With seeds from cider presses, he helped to establish orchards from Pennsylvania to the West. Wildlife eat lots of the fallen fruit after harvest.

A thicket-forming shrub or small tree with short trunk, many spreading branches, broad crown, showy, large white flowers, and red plums. The plums are about three fourths of an inch in diameter. The plums are eatedn fresh and used in jellies and preserves and juiced. Lots of birds like them. They are also grown for erosion control, spreeading by root sprouts. The Indians called a variety of this plum the “Potawatomie” in Utah. It also goes by the names red plum and river plum.

A shrub or small tree, often forming dense thickets, with dark red or blackish chokecherries. As the name suggests, chokecherries are yucky, especially when immature or raw. They can be made into a delicious jelly or preserve; however, the fruit stones are poisonous inside. Choke cherries were used by the Indians in making pemmican, a food of dried meat and various fruits, pounded fine, and stored in sacks of hide. If the leaves, wood, or seed are chewed, a toxic acid is released which may cause severe gastric disturbances in man.

De-cid-u- ous trees are grown all over town. Green leaves will turn to red, orange, yellow-brown. Maple, Quaking Aspen, Willow, Oak and Birch. Dogwood, Plum, and Cottonwood Where songbirds like to perch!