Need Help to Identify Trees in Winter? Here Are Some Tips

By Madeleine Bray

Identifying trees in the winter can feel like a hopeless task, especially if your woodlot or local forest contains many deciduous trees. You may notice that the bare branches of these trees all blur together without leaves telling you whether they’re maples or oaks, or something else entirely! But, even without leaves, deciduous trees stand apart from one another in the winter with their own unique features.

You might be lucky in your identification attempts and find trees with leaves or fruits still attached. American Beech is notorious for holding onto its leaves all winter. Acorns can provide a great deal of insight to what your local oaks might be but you can’t rely on these remnants of warmer months.

Firstly, look eye-level at the bark on a tree. There, you will find the species-specific patterns of cracks and crevasses that have formed over years of growth. Some bark is more distinctive than others, like the pale and peeling bark of a White Birch but looking at the colour and texture of bark can aid in your identification. The dark, crackling “burnt cornflakes” of a Black Cherry tree will always stand separate from the smooth, scarred, pale grey bark of an American Beech.

Looking up into the canopy, we can see the branches of the tree, and can make out its branching pattern. Branching patterns can be found throughout the tree, from the broadest of branches off the trunk to the smallest of twigs. There are two common patterns on trees – alternate branching, where leaves and twigs alternate from one side of a branch to the other, and opposite branching, where leaves and twigs originate from the same point at opposite sides of a branch. Opposite branching is the least common and can help narrow down your search. Maples, ashes, dogwoods, honeysuckles, and highbush cranberry are the more common opposite-branches trees and shrubs found natively in Ontario.

If the branches of a tree are near eye level or lower, the twigs should be your go-to for easy identification in the winter. Depending on the time of year, buds may have already formed on the twigs. These buds are the start of next spring’s leaves and are near identical between individuals of the same species, thus being easier to narrow down than bark texture. The size, shape, colour, and form of the buds will tell you all you need to know. Recognizing that buds are pointing away from a twig, or whether they are round or pointy, can give you useful insights, especially when using a winter identification key.

If the buds aren’t giving you enough information, you can always look below them to see the leaf scar. This is a mark on a twig left by the leaf that once lived there. They are formed naturally when a leaf falls off and remains on the twig forever.

Remembering every individual feature of a tree in winter can be difficult, but there are many useful identification guides and tools to assist you in your journey, including a Winter Tree ID Key developed for the Ontario Envirothon program. You can find this on the Forests Ontario website. Guides and keys can vary from region to region, so find one that works for you, and enjoy the winter wonderland!