What's that tree?

Trees look different in winter than how spring, summer and autumn trees look. Most don’t have leaves of any color! Without leaves, trees can all start to look like the same big stick stuck in the ground.

They aren’t all the same, though. Telling trees apart, especially without leaves, is a special skill. It’s one you can learn!

You can use some key features when you identify trees in winter, including size, bark color and texture, buds and the shapes branches make. Here’s some tools to help you identify some common Iowa trees:

 

Eastern Cottonwood

Size: Eastern cottonwoods are one of the biggest trees you can find in Iowa. They’re like the biggest, strongest football player you’ve ever seen. Some grow to be 100 feet tall!

Bark: Eastern cottonwood bark is dull gray color and rough to the touch. Younger trees have smooth bark, but as the tree gets older the bark develops deep ridges.

Buds: At the end of every twig on a tree, you can find buds — where new leaves, flowers or branches will grow next year. Buds on any tree are small, soft and usually round or cone shaped. Eastern cottonwood buds tend to be long, brown and shiny.

Shape: If you stand far away from any tree, you can see that the top (or the “crown”) of the tree makes a shape. During warmer seasons, leaves help outline the shape, but you can still use the branches to see the shape in winter. Branches on eastern cottonwoods like to grow outwards, so their crowns often end up looking like big, wide ovals.

 

Silver Maple

Size: Silver maples aren’t the biggest tree in Iowa, but they can still get pretty big. The oldest silver maples grow to be 60 to 80 feet tall. That’s as big as a building 5 stories high.

Bark: Bark on young silver maples is light gray and very smooth. Later, the bark becomes dark and rougher. On mature silver maples, the top layer of bark starts to peel away from the trunk as if the tree had scales.

Buds: The silver maple has very pretty, deep red buds. Sometimes they even look a little purple. Silver maple buds are also round and grow together in bunches, like grapes!

Shape: Silver maples’ shape is a little unpredictable. However, a lot of them look like tall, shaggy ovals. Silver maple crowns can also look like triangles pointed upward with rounded edges, like the stubbiest, shortest carrot you can imagine.

 

Quaking Aspen

Size: Quaking aspens tend to be a smaller tree in the forest, usually not getting taller than 60 feet.

Bark: You might spot quaking aspens at a distance because their bark is so light that it’s nearly white. This is especially true for young trees. As they get older, twigs and branches lower on the trunk will fall off.

Buds: Quaking aspen buds look a lot like eastern cottonwood buds. They’re also long, brown and shiny. If you touch them, they can be a bit sticky.

Shape: A quaking aspen’s crown is often narrow and pointy at the top, like a cone. They also have thin trunks and like to grow in groups.

 

Bur Oak

Size: A full-grown bur oak is usually 50 to 75 feet tall, but can sometimes grow to be more than 100 feet. If they have enough room, they’ll have wide trunks with low branches that grow away outward. A mature bur oak can look like an umbrella.

Bark: Like the eastern cottonwood, bur oak bark builds high ridges and deep grooves as it ages. Bur oak bark is a darker gray than eastern cottonwoods or even a bit brown. Many trees start out with smooth bark, but bark on bur oaks is still rough even when the tree is young.

Buds: Bur oaks’ buds are pretty small. If you look at the end of a bur oak twig, you’ll find a few gray-colored buds clustered together, barely poking out of the twig like very shy turtles huddled together, peeking out from their shells.

Shape: Their branches tend to spread out and make big, broad, rounded crowns. However, because they live such a long time – up to 400 years! – they may start to look crooked or asymmetrical.

 

Black Walnut

Size: Usually, black walnuts grow between 50 to 75 feet but could get as tall as 150 feet! Black walnuts also grow really thick trunks as they age.

Bark: Black walnut bark is gray, but if you peel a little bit of the top layer off (be careful, a little is good for teaching but too much hurts the tree) you’ll see pretty brown bark beneath. The grooves in the trunk make long diamond shapes between the ridges.

Buds: If you look at the very end of a black walnut twig, you’ll find a short, slightly curved bud. Like the bark, a black walnut bud is gray, though they’re a much lighter gray. One thing that makes black walnut special is a fuzzy, white covering on every bud.

Shape: Their crowns usually end up rounded, as a circle or an oval. When they grow out in the open, their branches grow outward and they look like an umbrella. When they grow around other trees, black walnut branches are more likely to grow upwards and look round like an ice cream scoop. However, it might be harder to tell the shape of a black walnut crown in winter because their branches aren’t very uniform. Without a pattern in the branches, the shape might not look as clear without leaves filling in the gaps.

 

These aren’t all the trees in Iowa — not even close! Iowa has tall trees and short trees; trees that grow quick and trees that grow slowly; trees that like forests and trees that like fields. Some lose their leaves for the winter like the ones we talked about here (called “deciduous trees”) but trees with needles (called “coniferous trees”) usually keep those year-round. You could devote your entire life to studying all the trees in Iowa! (And some people do, like arborists and dendrologists.)

Even if you aren’t an arborist, you can keep learning more about trees. Find a field guide to Iowa trees or a trust-worthy website, head outside or look out your window, and start to match trees to their descriptions.