Tree ID Brainstorm

Ok, what trees could we potentially learn if we were learning to ID trees?

Some thoughts:

American beech

American linden / basswood

bald cypress

black tupelo

black walnut

blue beech / ironwood
Blue Beech (PDF)

chestnut

chickasaw plum
Chickasaw Plum (PDF)

dogwood

Eastern cottonwood
Eastern cottonwood (PDF)

ginkgo

hazelnut

holly
The native American Holly is a rare tree in Illinois, occurring in only a single county in southern Illinois... and that is Union County!

loblolly pine
Loblolly Pine (PDF)

maple, red

maple, sugar

mulberry

oak, bur

oak, red

oak, white

osage orange

pawpaw

pecan

persimmon

prairie crabapple

red buckeye

redbud

red cedar
Red Cedar (PDF)

river birch

sassafras

shagbark hickory

slippery elm
Slippery Elm (PDF)

Southern magnolia

sweetgum

sycamore

tulip poplar

white ash

wild black cherry
Wild Black Cherry (PDF)

We have a large stack of very cool framed preserved leaves at the EE center. I think those trees should be a priority, since the example leaves are easy to show the kids. I need to go down and inventory what those trees are...

There's also the Illinois Trees Poster (PDF).

And we have multiple different Trees of Illinois resource books in the storage room -- with plenty of copies of each so that they can be used in lessons -- so I need to look at all of those, choose one, see how many copies we have, and think about how they could best be used.

One stands out to me already because it is in stapled packet form and has just one tree per page, with a short description and simple line drawings, and a huge amount of white space. (We also have the newer version of that packet and they have changed it completely and made it much more visually crowded. I think it was way better before because I think these Tree ID pages would be great to use as the bark and leaf rubbing paper.)

So I am thinking that I could disassemble one of the copies of the packet, create a new packet using only sheets for the trees we intend to cover, and the children could do the rubbings right onto the pages, and then take the finished packets home at the end.

Redwoods
by Jason Chin

Fun Fact! There is one Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) on the grounds of the Southern Illinois University Campus in Carbondale (Jackson County). This tree is called "William Marberry Dawn Redwood Tree". The girth and height are not known. This tree germinated / was planted in 1950.

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