Trees

Biology

Mr. Hager

Oaks

Pin Oak Northern Red Oak Bur Oak Black Oak Swamp Chestnut Oak Shumard Oak

Pin Oak

Interestingly, pin oak is named for a physical characteristic where small, thin, dead branches stick out like pins from the main trunk.

Northern Red Oak

Northern red oak is an important source of hardwood lumber. Its wood is heavy, hard, strong, coarse-grained, and at least moderately durable.

Bur Oak

Acorns of bur oak make up much of the food of red squirrels and are also eaten by wood ducks, white-tailed deer, New England cottontails, mice, thirteen-lined ground squirrels, and other rodents.

Black Oak

It grows best on moist, rich, well-drained soils, but it is often found on poor, dry sandy or heavy glacial clay hillsides where it seldom lives more than 200 years. Good crops of acorns provide wildlife with food.

Swamp Chestnut Oak

Swamp chestnut oak (Quercus michauxii) is known also as basket oak, for the baskets made from its wood, and cow oak because cows eat the acorns. One of the important timber trees of the South, it grows on moist and wet loamy soils of bottom lands, along streams and borders of swamps in mixed hardwoods.

Shumard Oak

Shumard oak (Quercus shumardii) is one of the largest southern red oaks. Other common names are spotted oak, Schneck oak, Shumard red oak, southern red oak, and swamp red oak.

Eastern Cottonwood

Eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides), one of the largest eastern hardwoods, is short-lived but the fastest-growing commercial forest species in North America.

Black Walnut

Black walnut used to be a very common old-growth forest tree. Black walnut wood is now relatively scarce and highly coveted, used mainly for high quality woodworking. The Black Walnut produces a substance that is toxic or "allelopathic" to other plants called juglone. Tomatoes and coniferous trees are especially sensitive. This mild toxin helps the tree keep other vegetation from competing or valuable nutrients and moisture.

White Ash

White ash is the largest of the ashes native to North America. Its growth is very responsive when growing in rich soils but is never a dominant forest species. Ash has been a part of American sports since the 1890s when Louisville Slugger started manufacturing a baseball bat with ash.

Silver Maple

The tree is useful in wet areas, transplants easily and can grow where few others can. It should be saved for planting in wet areas or where nothing else will thrive.