trees Archives

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Barb — 7 Comments

Autumn 2010 OHC #9 Pine Cone Study

Today we went on a drive up in the mountains and would you believe there was snow! I spotted some freshly fallen pinecones and it was a perfect introduction to this week’s challenge. The snowy landscape reminded me that we will soon be finished with the Autumn Series and it will be time for a new season to start. The Autumn Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges has greatly added to our family’s knowledge of everyday things around us and I hope they have helped your family too. Next week will be our last autumn challenge and a nice giveaway so make sure to pop over to the blog next Friday to read all about it.

Autumn Series #9
Pine Cones
(You may also like to use this challenge: Pine Cones.)

“Their foliage is evergreen but is shed gradually. The pollen-bearing and the seed-producing flowers are separate on the tree. The seeds are winged and are developed in cones.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 674

Inside Preparation Work:
Read pages 670-675 in the Handbook of Nature Study (Lesson 185). This section talks about the pine tree and gives the background for this challenge. Pay attention to questions 5 and 6 in this lesson covering the pine cone.

Compare A Tree with Cones and A Tree Without Cones

Compare needles and leaves, including their arrangement on the branches, shapes, and colors.
Compare the trunks and bark, including the shape of the tree. Does the main trunk go straight up or branch out? How low do the branches start? Is there a crown?

Outdoor Hour Time:
Take fifteen minutes outdoors this week to explore your yard or neighborhood looking for a pine tree and pine cones. Remember how to identify a pine tree and use some of the things you read about in the Handbook to help your child learn a little about the pine tree. You could point out the difference between an evergreen and a deciduous tree, how the pine tree’s leaves are needles, the distinct shape of a pine tree, and the cones. Collect at least one cone to bring indoors for observations in the follow-up activity.

Follow-Up Activity:
Use a hand lens to look closely at your pine cone. Take note of its shape, size, color, and patterns. The Handbook of Nature Study suggests the following sketches in your nature journal:

Bundle of needles, showing the sheath and its attachment to the twig.
The cone.
The cone scale.
The seed (under the scales)

You can use the notebook page provided with the Autumn ebook, a blank page in your nature journal, or a blank notebook page.

Additional activity: Soak your cone in water. Check your cone every 15 minutes to see what happens. Now let the cone dry. This sometimes will loosen the seeds inside and you can take a closer look at their shapes and structure. Try this activity again and soak only half your cone in water and see what happens. You can try this additional activity: Pine Cone Science Experiment.

Additional Resources:
Help in identifying pines.

A Pine Cone Tale: This link will be helpful if you don’t have access to a pine tree to observe and the formation of cones.

Note: This nature study challenge can be found in the Autumn 2010 ebook.

If you would like to own this ebook, it is part of the Ultimate Naturalist Library for members. You can find more details on how to get your own membership here: Join Us!

Ultimate Ebook Library @handbookofnaturestudy

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Barb — 4 Comments

Seasonal Tree Study and Leaf Comparisons

I don’t usually enjoy the fall season…it is a melancholy time for me. I love the barefoot days of summer and the hot afternoons working in the garden or swimming in the pool. I would much rather be hiking in the green, green hills with wildflowers blooming at my side in the springtime. The promise of spring and the activity of summer are much more likely to gain my vote for “favorite season”. Winter is the enduring time, the time for preparing for spring and summer.

Autumn days are soon filled with colored leaves, falling leaves, and raking leaves. It seems to creep up slowly but then you wake up one morning to find that the leaves are starting to turn colors…..oranges, reds, yellows, golds, purples.

Observing autumn trees and looking close though, you will see spring’s leaves preparing for the winter.

So here we are in the middle of our autumn challenges and making the best of what the season has to offer. We gathered a few leaves to compare and my son reminded me that we did an in-depth study of leaves and their parts as part of our biology study.

I went to the shelf and pulled out his biology notebook and his nature journal and we thumbed through to find our completed study.

So now what could we do to learn more about leaves?

First of all, I shared with my son the idea that I gleaned from Amy at The Teachable Heart and her family’s study of autumn leaves. She actually color copied the leaves for their nature journals and they looked wonderful. I thought maybe we could do the same for our tree and other fall leaves that we were comparing just for a change in our journals.

We had already decided to choose another tree to study for a year-long tree study, the birch tree in our backyard. We gathered a few leaves and took a closer look at the tree while we were out there.

Welcome to our new tree for the year! We are excited to see what we can learn by looking at and comparing this tree to our previous tree study subjects.

These catkins are such interesting things to look at and we looked up some more information in our tree guide after our outdoor time.

We brought some inside to look at with our loupes and to draw in detail in our nature journals.

While we were out we looked at several other kinds of leaves….the dandelion growing in my pot is such an interesting shape in comparison to our tree leaves.

How about these leaves on the broccoli? Amazing gray-green color.

Our coleus is still giving us blazing amounts of color in the container garden on the deck. It makes me happy just to look at these leaves.

It had to go in my nature journal.

Watercolor pencils are fun to work with in your nature journals and we always have a set sitting on or near our work area table. It is easy to sketch quickly and then come back later to add water and details.

I will end my entry here since this journal is getting quite long. We are enjoying the connections between our biology study and our nature study using the Outdoor Hour Challenges.

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Barb — 8 Comments

Apples-Autumn Series Challenge Day

Autumn came this past weekend to our world and we awoke to sprinkles of rain on the ground. It wasn’t much so we didn’t let it cancel our plans to head up early to the apple orchards to find some apples to sample and use as part of our apple challenge.

Our traditional autumn outing always starts off with apple cider doughnuts….there are plain, glazed, crumb, and cinnamon spice varieties to enjoy along with your big cup of steaming hot coffee. The crumb doughnuts were the first to be eaten. We were early enough to have a good spot to sit to eat and enjoy the mountain air.

Then the real business of the day was at hand, choosing a few new kinds of apples to try. We were disappointed that they did not have Honey Crisp to purchase since I had read on several blogs about their wonderful taste. In the end, we settled on Empire, Jonagold, and Mutsu.

Empire is a cross between Red delicious and McIntosh.
Jonagold is a cross between a Jonathan and a Golden Delicious.
Mutsu is also known as the Crispin.

Our official taste tests were interrupted when we decided to make the Mutsu apples into a pastry dessert. Mr. B had already created a wonderful dessert a few months ago with some apples and he repeated his recipe for us to enjoy again.

We compared the sizes, colors, shapes, and tastes of the apples, noting the seed patterns, the skin textures, and the skin thicknesses as we cut and peeled the apples for the pastry and some applesauce.

Some of the apples were so large that they would be a complete meal all by themselves! My dear husband announced that although he enjoyed the new varieties that we picked out, he still loves the Granny Smith for eating the best. Go figure.

This was a delicious challenge for our family and we learned a little more about the different local varieties of apples available for eating and baking.

Posted on October 17, 2010 by Barb — 11 Comments

An Autumn Tree Observation Extraordinaire

We decided that our autumn study of leaves was going to be incorporated into our annual fall trip to see the colors of the aspens up in the high country of the Sierra Nevada. The trip is about 100 miles round trip from our front door but it goes through magnificent forests, by snow fed lakes, and in view of some of the most breathtaking mountains in existence.

The first leg of the trip goes through the pine forests and we thought our day had come to an end before it really started when we encountered a control burn of the forest floor by the US Forest Service. They clean out the underbrush by setting fires and then controlling the burns. It makes a lot of smoke but we were able to drive down the highway and past the fires onto our destination.

The second part of the forest is actually in Alpine County and the forests are mixed in with aspen groves to make wonderful color in the fall. You know the minute you hit this part of the habitat because you start to see the yellows, oranges, and golds of the leaves.

We have a favorite side road that has the prettiest meadow. Yes, that is my son out there taking just as many photos as I am on this day….it is awesome to share a hobby with your grown up kids.

Here you can see the shape of the aspen leaf and the trunk of the tree in all its beauty. I never tire of looking at aspens.

It was fairly cloudy this afternoon but for a few minutes the clouds parted and we had a chance to capture the blue sky in contrast to the bright yellow leaves.

We drove the next leg of the road which leads through a place called Hope Valley. This is “the” place to see fall color in our area. There were many of us lined up on the side of the road to capture the oranges and yellows and golds of the trees on the mountain. Isn’t it dreamy?

Then as we headed back around to Christmas Valley, we saw this scene. There were some people on horses rounding up a herd of cattle. Stop the car! Yes, we had to take a few photos of this and it was the perfect way to end up this part of drive.

We observed some of the leaves “quaking”. We learned from our field guide that the reason they shake that way is because the stem is flattened near the leaf and so when the wind blows they shake or quake. It sounds sort of like the ocean to me when you hear them quaking and is a nice sound. Here is a link to try: USDA Quaking Aspens.

There was more to this trip but I will save that for another post. We actually went to see the salmon spawning and there were quite a few ducks to observe as well. Stay tuned for a salmon post when that challenge comes up in a few weeks.

I also am going to post a separate entry for our leaf comparisons since this post became rather long. Stay tuned for part two. We also have picked a new tree in our backyard to observe for a year-long tree study and I will share our fall observations with the leaf post.

Today we will be working on the apple challenge but the horse challenge is still in the works.

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Barb — 5 Comments

Trees Do Fall Down in the Woods

Now this could pose a problem…..a big pine tree down across our hiking trail.

We actually noticed before that this particular tree is *full* of acorn holes where the woodpeckers have made a huge storehouse of acorns in the trunk. We think this is what led to the demise of this big tree. That looks like a fresh acorn inside the hole.

When it fell, big pieces of the bark came off and exposed all the acorn holes. We climbed up and over to continue our hike. The dog decided to crawl underneath but either way it worked.

Further down the trail my son spotted this section of a wasp nest on the trail. These are amazing creations and hard to believe that an insect made this out of their spit and plant fibers. Once again the Handbook of Nature Study helped us to learn a little bit more about the process of building the nest on page 381 (Lesson 95). The whole section is fascinating…here is an excerpt:

“The nest is of paper made of bits of wood which the wasps pull off with their jaws from weather-worn fences or boards. This wood is reduced to pulp by saliva which is secreted from the wasp’s mouth, and is laid on in little layers which can be easily seen by examining the outside of the nest.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 381.

We also noticed these puffy growths on the oak branches along the trail. We thought maybe they were some sort of gall. I am still working on figuring out what exactly they are so if anyone has any ideas, I would appreciate an email.

It is nice to be out hiking again as the weather is cooling down a bit. My sons have been down off and on this week with a cold/flu. Mr. A said it was nice to get out and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine and I know it always makes me feel better too.

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Barb — Leave a comment

Summer Tree-OHC #2 Our Summer Tulip Tree Study

Tulip Tree or Yellow Poplar Tree

We have been observing the tulip tree very closely and I shared the blossoms a few weeks ago when we had the complete tree covered in blooms. Now it is mostly big yellow-green leaves that provide abundant shade on the front of our house.

There is a mockingbird that frequents the tree early in the morning to sing us a song. It is a nice way to wake up, with the leaves silhouetted on the window blinds and the sound of bird song in the air.

My son noticed that the bark has some moss on it still even in the heat. There were ants on the trunk as well. There were no bees visible, but we know when the tree is blooming it is alive with bees.

Here are our nature journals which this time we decided to use photos instead of drawing. It makes a quick and easy journal that looks really nice.

I opted to add a photo to my nature journal from last month when the tree was blooming.

My son’s journal has a photo of the tree as well. He made a list of his observations and then added a photo to make a very easy nature journal entry.

This entry completes our full circle for the year:

Autumn Entry

Winter Entry

Spring Entry

It hardly seems possible that we have gone all through the seasons with our tree already. This is such a great way to learn more about what is right in our own yard. We have started to think about what tree we will observe next….oh the possibilities!

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Barb — 4 Comments

Redwood Dreams

After we left the Oregon coast and the wonderful tidepools, we headed south back down into California and to the redwood forests. We stayed two days near Redwood National Park and then inland to Humboldt Redwoods. Both places were refreshing and awe inspiring. I know that many of you dream of seeing the big trees and I hope you get to in real life someday. It is worth the effort and the dreaming.

In the meantime, I will give a little glimpse into our few days there this time around.

The majesty of these trees has inspired many before us. I spent some time this trip meditating on the men and women who dedicated parts of their lives to saving these forests and their ancient giants. Many of these trees have been alive since at least the time of Christ….that gives you something to think about as you walk alongside these living things so tall they make your neck hurt to look up at them.

One person that I learned about on this trip was John D. Rockefeller. He played a huge part in saving thousands of acres of these trees at a time that it was crucial. These trees were being cut down for a growing nation’s hunger for timber. He was invited to visit these groves of trees early in the 20th century and he immediately jumped in with a million dollars to purchase great forests of the redwood trees. He donated another million later on and saved many more. Today you can walk through the Rockefeller Redwood Forest and see many of these ancient giants up close because of efforts of the Save the Redwoods League and others.

I prayed a silent prayer first to our Grand Creator thanking him for these unique and special trees. Noting their qualities and their beauty and how they so wonderfully tell us of God’s qualities and beauty. Then a prayer of thanks to having created us with the ability to appreciate these trees and forests. Lastly for those that have appreciated and loved the forests before us, keeping them safe for our families to enjoy.

These forests just seem to make you want to seek a little solitude as you hike, even my energetic teens are struck with their awesomeness.

But boys will be boys and they tend to want to climb up on the fallen trees to get a new perspective on the scene.

Hiking in the redwoods is quiet because the trails are softened with “duff” which makes a matted forest floor. It is spongy and easy to walk on with little dust. I find it very enjoyable and your eyes are free to take in the contrasts of light and dark of the forest. The sky is bright above but under the canopy of the trees it is sometimes quite dark. This is the stuff that storybooks are filled with…lots of interesting sounds, smells, and curious sights.

We took a drive one of our days to a place that we had never ventured to before…the Lost Coast of California. What a day!

Leaving the dense forest and heading down into the coastal valleys was an awesome experience. The road was crazy with potholes, narrow sections, crazy curves, steep ups and downs, and wild drivers.

We stopped at several spots along the way to take in the view and snap a few photos. Here is my oldest son setting up his photo with the redwoods, the rolling hills, and the ocean in the distance.

Here is one of his photos from the day’s trip along the Lost Coast. Amazing color in the water. We spent the whole day exploring and taking in this unique place in California…..a little off the beaten path. We had a picnic lunch along and stopped in a little town called Petrolia to sit at a picnic table and enjoy our afternoon.

There is so much to write about but at the sake of turning this into a travel journal, I will finish here. If you have any questions about anything I have shared in this post, please feel free to email me for more details.

I hope this gives you a glimpse into our time in the redwoods and along the redwood coast. Keep dreaming your redwood dreams.

More info on the Lost Coast Drive

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Barb — 7 Comments

Spring Tree Update: Blossoms on our Tulip Tree

Our tulip tree is blooming like crazy! I have never seen so many blossoms on this tree and the bees have noticed too. The buzzing starts as soon as the sun rises and continues most of the day.

Wouldn’t you want to buzz around this blossom and collect some pollen too? The colors and patterns are very impressive if you take the time to observe them up close. You can see clearly the inner part that will become the helicopter seeds in the fall right there in the middle of the blossom.

You can see how the sepals bend back and expose the flowers. The design of this flower truly shows the finger of our Grand Creator.

Here is a view of the tree with all the flowers….it is amazing the difference between the seasons in this tree.

Our next update will be with the Summer Series of Challenges.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Posted on May 16, 2010 by Barb — 2 Comments

Our Apple Tree Study: Spring Time

Spring Series-Apple Tree Study

Our new apple tree’s blossoms. Photo from 4/22/10 taken by my son Mr. A.

Our study took a turn when we had a huge rainstorm and an inch of snow a few days later. Our weather has been very unstable so we had to postpone our plans to observe our own newly planted apple tree and then drive up the road from our house where there are apple orchards by the acre.

We were finally able to do both parts of the study yesterday.

First our tree….this is the first year we are observing this tree. It had blossoms some time ago but now I am assuming these are the baby apples.

The leaves are a nice texture and we found quite a few bugs crawling on the branches. My husband used the garden hose to spray them off and today they were still not back.

This particular tree has had different kinds of apples grafted onto one trunk. Gravenstein, Fuji, Red Delicious, and a Rome.

It will be interesting to watch this tree mature.

Now for our drive to the apple orchard.

The sky was amazing with its white billowy clouds. My boys actually told me to stop and take a photo….as we stopped the car we realized that there was a field of sweet smelling lupine on the other side of the road.

What a delight and a surprise to see this sight right near-by our home.

The orchards are all green and no longer full of blossoms.

It seems as if you could walk down the rows and feel the apples growing on the trees. I love apples.

Typing up this entry and viewing these photos makes me think that spring really is here. I can see it in the photos. Hooray for spring!

Just another note: I have seriously been lacking in my posting on this blog this week because of the time I am devoting to writing the Summer Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges. There is just so much to research and to pull together so we will have a wonderful adventure this summer with the challenges. I am really looking forward to sharing my new ideas with you soon.

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Barb — 4 Comments

Our Year-Long Tree Study: Spring Tulip Tree

We were able to get out and enjoy our spring temperatures this afternoon, completing a tree study of our Tulip tree as part of our on-going year-long tree study for the Outdoor Hour Challenge.

Our Observations

Leaves are showing on many of the branches but there is still lots of growing that needs to happen.
The seeds from last fall are still visible on many of the branches. Hard to believe it still has that many.
We did not see any insects or birds this afternoon but this tree is a favorite of our early morning robin, the Western scrub jays, and the white-breasted nuthatch. We see them in this tree daily now.
The leaves were all very small but we did compare a few and they are the same shape.
There are lots of changes in the leaves and colors since the fall and winter. The shape of the tree is different as well because all of our freak winter snow broke off many of the branches in this tree…a few ending up on the roof of our house.
We discovered that we will not be able to use the activity on page 626 to measure the height of our tree. The tree’s shadow lands squarely on the roof of our house in the morning. I am going to ask my husband if he can help us figure out how to accomplish the task.

We came back inside with one of the leaves and my son and I both sketched it into our nature journals.

His is very simple while I took a little more time and played with my watercolor pencils and my Prismacolor pens.

We found this interesting website on our tree: Yellow poplar or Tulip Tree. This tree is not native to California, but many choose it to grow as a shade tree. We like the shade as well as the leaf shape and the flowers later in the spring.

Here are our autumn and winter blog entries for this tree.

It is not too late to get outdoors and start observing a tree. You can even start this season and continue over the next year. The best way to observe your tree is to go outside and quietly sit and look at your tree. You may be surprised and see some visitors as you sit. I am anxious to see how your family’s tree has changed since the last time you reported in.

Category: trees