Wednesday, January 21, 2015

A Second Look--January 21, 2015

When Aunt Martha was in college, she was studying to be a naturalist. One day I overheard her talking to a classmate about identifying trees in the winter and using the feel and look of their bark to help with that. My ears perked up because that was a new concept for me. I thought that all bark looked basically the same--gray/brown and rough. At least it did until I took a Second Look. And by golly, there were a lot of differences. However over the years, I still haven't paid much any attention to trees and their bark.  So decades later during these gray days, I thought it was time to take a Second Look at some of the trees in my yard.

Here are some trees and their bark that 
I saw this week  during a Second Look.

Dogwood


Holly


Oak


Juniper

Silver Maple


Pine


Theodore did the bark investigation with me and took some of the pictures.


6 comments:

  1. One of the museums we frequent with our kids has an area devoted to Michigan's wood and wildlife. They have cross-sections of different species of trees--you can keep opening each section and the innermost one identifies the tree. We can usually figure out oak and birch (we have those in our yard) but the others leave us befuddled.

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    1. I do a lot better with leaves on than leaves off when trying to identify a tree. I know more than I used to, but still have limited knowledge when it comes to tree identification.

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    2. My husband is good at that kind of thing. He's a biologist, so maybe his brain is wired that way. He thought my son's fourth-grade leaf collection project was the best thing, ever. Thank goodness. Finding 25+ of different varieties of leaves would have stressed me out.

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    3. I think I would have liked that project, too. Did your son like it?

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  2. Great photos. I still have to look at trees bark and leaves and at times, I'm still guessing..lol

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    Replies
    1. The next thing I'm going to pay attention to is the shape of the tree. Some are very round, some are tall and skinny and so on.

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What do you think?