The Cranberry Tree

It’s time for trees…

Ah, spring is here.  My month has been full of farmer’s meetings, so I have slow to update this blog.  We have had a snow storm, a big melt, and ice jams on culverts.  Besides all this activity, the trees are getting closer to breaking dormancy and putting on new leaves. 

We are pretty fortunate in Pembina County.  We have natural forested areas in a predominantly prairie state.  In Cavalier, there is the Cavalier and McKechnie Woods.  By Walhalla, there is the Tetrault State Forest.

Our next class is going to focus on tree identification.  Tree ID may cause shudders down your spine.  My college notebook has 367 trees that I had to know for a plant class (ID, common and scientific names).  There are about 25ish common trees to know.  Mountains are climbed by putting on foot in front of another, so let’s start with five trees.

Russian Olive – This tree was on the test from last year.  Russian Olives are spiny, knarled trees.  The foliage looks like slivery lanceoate (lance-like) leaves.  These trees are considered invasive under the right conditions.  In dry places or salty land places, these trees can thrive where other trees die.

Green Ash – This large tree is everywhere in ND.  Green ash have compound leaves.  This means the leaf is separated into leaflets.  Green ash may have between 5 to 7 leaflets.  Mature ash bark has grooves and to me looks a little like narrow diamonds running up the bark.

Bur Oak – Another familiar large tree in our county, where I grew up an oak was a rare tree but here.  The hills of Walhalla and City of Cavalier has many dark-colored almost black barked oaks present.  Oaks resist drought conditions and may live up to 400 years.  The seeds are in the acorn.

Quaking Aspen – This white barked tree is “bush tree” in our county.  Aspen have small deltoid leaves. The trees are found in clumps, as the root system suckers.  This is a tree that has used silviculture practices in our county to be processed into chipboard.

Paper Birch – Another white barked tree.  It can be confused with quacking aspen because of this character.  Aspen has flat petioles (leaf stems) while the paper birch does not.  Paper birch bark exfoliates off the tree like “paper” as it is named.  Paper birch has strobile fruit.  These looks like very small soft cones. My facebook picture is cutleaf weeping birch are variety of this tree.

Posted at 03:16PM Mar 19, 2009 by Lesley Lubenow in Forestry  |  Comments[0]