I may have posted this at some point in past years, I honestly don’t remember.

The Lay Person’s Guide to Conifers; “Inside Baseball Kinda Stuff”

My B.S. degree is in Renewable Natural Resources, majoring in Rangeland Management. As one of my professors put it, “When I go on hikes and everyone else is looking up at the trees, I’m looking down at the grasses and forbs.” Still, you can’t work 25 years for the Forest Service and not learn a little bit about trees.

I helped haul trees from a nursery, north of Fort Collins. I said something about the spruce trees being loaded on the trailer and one of the guys working on the farm said, “I just call them all ‘pine trees’.” Yeah, so do a lot of other people. Therefore, I offer this quick-and-dirty guide to conifers (which is a better catch-all name than “pine”).

Spruce trees have square needles, which are sharp. Roll a spruce needle in your fingers and you’ll feel the edges. Feel the tip of the needle. If you’ve ever had a spruce for a Christmas tree, the sharpness of the needle is especially noticeable when you go to take it down; the needles are drier and they hurt. Spruce=square and sharp.

Fir trees have flat needles. They are noticeably softer than spruce. The tips are rounded. The most common fir in the West is the Subalpine fir, which is not a terribly pretty tree, nor is it valuable for its wood. Foresters have a couple of uncomplimentary names for Subalpine fir. OTOH, one of the prettiest conifers in the forest is the Douglas fir. It is not a “true fir,” in fact, its scientific name essentially means false fir or hemlock, but its needles are as I described above. BTW, the wood from Doug fir is very valuable. Fir=flat

Pine trees. The needles of pines are always clustered. If you pick the needles off a Ponderosa pine, you’ll find the cluster of 3 needles is wrapped, or bundled in a bark colored “fascicle.” There are Piñon pines with a single-needle, but even that one needle is wrapped at it base. Pines=wrapped in fascicles.

Very informative thanks for posting this, TMats!

My knowledge of plants.

If tall and green, its a tree.
It is is short and green, its a bush.
If its green and ground level, its grass.

I never knew that about conifer needles. Thanks for the info.

And if the bark smells a bit like vanilla or butterscotch it's probably a Ponderosa.

quote:

Originally posted by Redleg06:
And if the bark smells a bit like vanilla or butterscotch it's probably a Ponderosa.

IIRC, if it smells of strawberries, it's a Sugar Pine.

How about cedar and cypress on layman's list of conifers? My understanding of pines is cluster of 2, 3, or 5 needles and actual big pine cones.

quote:

And if the bark smells a bit like vanilla or butterscotch it's probably a Ponderosa.

I had to double check as my memory said no, the vanilla butterscotch smell means it's a Jeffrey pine. I was right.

The other trick is to pick up a pine cone. If it's prickly, it's a ponderosa. If it's not, it's a Jeffrey ("gentle Jeffrey, prickly ponderosa").

If you get into redwoods, there's an easy way to tell the giant Sequoia from the coast redwood (other than habitat). The cone of the Sequoia, which is the larger tree, is smaller than the coast redwood.

We used to take a little booklet called Tree Finder on hikes, to key out the differences. It was really helpful. I don't know if it's still published.
I just ordered a used Pacific Tree Finder from Amazon. The East Coast Tree Finder is for deciduous trees.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
How about cedar and cypress on layman's list of conifers? My understanding of pines is cluster of 2, 3, or 5 needles and actual big pine cones.

There are no true cedars in N America. When you think of cedar, you might think of the symbol of Lebanon, the cedar tree. What we commonly refer to as “cedars” in the U.S. are junipers. One-seed juniper looks like a great big tumbleweed. They are a native, but invasive into grasslands across N Arizona, Utah, and NM. The valuable junioer is Utah juniper. They have a nice, straight trunk, and are commonly used for fence posts—they wear like iron; I’ve seen fences built by the CCC in the 30s and the posts were still solid.

Eastern red cedar is found in the eastern half of the country (Juniperus virginiana). They can be pretty big. Their wood, like Utah juniper is a very pretty mix of reds, browns, and amber. We have a bench at the foot of our bed, made by a friend from a red cedar cut near the Missouri River in NE Nebraska.

Sorry, I only lived and worked around the interior West, I don’t know cypress trees.

My OP explains that it’s possible for a pine to have only one needle, but it will be wrapped in a fascicle.

This is called a northern white-cedar in Michigan:


I had no idea it wasn't a cedar. Looking it up though, it's a thuja not a juniper (again, I had no clue), so I can see why people use common names.

What about Bull Pine and Long Leaf?

quote:

Originally posted by smlsig:
What about Bull Pine and Long Leaf?

I don’t know what your question is, I had never heard the term “bull pine,” but a minute’s research discloses that it’s a term applied to 6 or 7 genuses of pine, including Pinus ponderosa, the one I’m most familiar with. Bull seems to apply to especially large specimens, often isolated.

I’ve never lived or worked in the southeast, but Long Leaf and Loblolly are very commonly found on privately owned tree plantations. They are fast growing and are the source for a lot of lumber products now.

When I lived in Arizona we used to harvest the cones from Pinon Pines. Grandmother would get the nuts from the cones and sell the nuts to the store.

Last thing me I was thinking n Arizona the stores were still buying. I was told that the Pinons were dieing due to some disease. Pine nuts now mostly come from China.

If it's shimmering with lights and doo dads on your living room,
It's Christmas.

wow

quote:

Originally posted by TMats:
The valuable junioer is Utah juniper. They have a nice, straight trunk, and are commonly used for fence posts—they wear like iron; I’ve seen fences built by the CCC in the 30s and the posts were still solid.

The mountain my cabin is on is covered with Utah junipers. There isn't a straight one anywhere. Are we talking about the same tree?

quote:

Originally posted by TMats:

quote:

Originally posted by smlsig:
What about Bull Pine and Long Leaf?

I don’t know what your question is, I had never heard the term “bull pine,” but a minute’s research discloses that it’s a term applied to 6 or 7 genuses of pine, including Pinus ponderosa, the one I’m most familiar with.

Yep, synonymous with Ponderosa around here. Can't stand the dang things. Ugly messy trees. Ankle busting cones with needles everywhere, and the wood is mostly useless. Mills don't want it and it's lousy firewood. You can't give the stuff away.

quote:

Originally posted by DrDan:

quote:

Originally posted by Redleg06:
And if the bark smells a bit like vanilla or butterscotch it's probably a Ponderosa.

IIRC, if it smells of strawberries, it's a Sugar Pine.

And if it smells of stale cigarettes and booze, that's just Al Pine (the estranged husband of Sue Pine).

Since I studied Forest Science I have to jump in.

Pine trees have two, three, or five needles per clump or fascicle. In the West two needles is Lodgepole, three needles is Ponderosa, five needles is Sugar Pine or Western White Pine. Sugar Pine has the cones up to 18 inches or so.

Spruce have single needles, sharp, square, and they sit on a small stump like projection. The bare twigs will feel like sandpaper.

True fir the needles are soft, and where they attach to the twig spread out and resemble a suction cup. The needles come out of the sides of the twig (two ranked) and may lay flat like Grand fir or sweep upward like White fir.

Douglas-fir and hemlock the needles are soft and have a small stem where they attach to the twig (petiole), Douglas-fir the needles come out 360 degrees around the twig, hemlock are two ranked and lay flat.

The cedars have what we call as scale like needles. It will take some imagination but the "scales" resemble fish scales as they lay on top of the next "scale." They are in a single row opposed to the whole side of a fish.

That is a small primer of how to identify a few trees. It can get pretty involved. Balsam and Fraser fir look very similar, especially when young. You have to check the stomata pores on the underside of the needles and Fraser fir the stomata are more prominent, at least where I studied at Penn State. It is subjective and 100 miles away they could be the same and more scrutiny is needed.

I have 8 big Doug fir behind my house. I would like those needle and little cone dropping bastids to be gone. But the state says they have to stay for the habitat area/floodway channel the other side of the trees. The needles, cones, and sap are a pain....
Also painful is the broken branches and debris from heavy wind. The needles can fill the roof gutters in 3 months. I'm too old to get up there and clean the roof.