Top 5 Trees Outside Your Door

Title: Top 5 Trees Outside Your Door
Description: Learn about the top 5 trees in the Pacific Northwest and how to identify them by leaves, bark and cones or fruit they produce.
Season: All year but best in spring
Length of Activity: 45 minutes
Age: 6-adult
Button: Start the Activity

Top 5 Trees Outside Your Door
According to Botanical Gardens Conservation International, there are approximately 60,065 species of trees in the world. Broadly, all 60,065 of them are clumped into two different categories: deciduous and coniferous.

Can you guess what those words mean?

Deciduous means to “fall off”. These are the trees that, each autumn, shed their usually wide, flat leaves.

Coniferous, refers to the trees whose seeds come in the form of a cone, like a pinecone, and have needle-like leaves that stay green all year long and are referred to as evergreens.

It’s pretty easy to tell a deciduous tree from a coniferous tree, but what about within each category? How can we tell them apart?

In today’s lesson we are going to learn how to identify the trees outside your door by looking at the leaves, bark and cones or fruit they produce.

Supplies and Tools needed:
● Your eyes for keen observing
● A notepad and pencil (optional)

Getting started

Step 1: Take a walk outside your door. Notice all the different trees. Look closely at the leaves. Are they deciduous or coniferous trees? How can you tell?

Step 2: See if you can find 5 different trees. Harvest 1 leaf from each tree you find, taking note of the color and texture of the bark and whether or not you see any cones or fruit.

Step 3: After you’ve gathered your “field notes” check out the Washington Forestry website to see if you can figure out what species of tree you’ve found.

Taking it Deeper
The Pacific Northwest is home to more evergreen trees than almost anywhere else in the United States. Here is a beautifully compiled story map of over 50 species that grow naturally in our region.

Further Reading
If you have yet to read The Tree Book for Kids and Their Grownups,
It is an absolute must. Look for it at your public library or local bookstore.

Further Watching
One of the giants of our forests is the Douglas Fir, but just how giant are they? Take a look at this awesome video about how the Douglas Fir trees have shaped the northwest.