trees Archives

Posted on November 20, 2008 by Barb — 1 Comment

English Walnuts-Yes, Another Tree Study

Today was *another* cloudless day but we were outside looking to see what we could find interesting in the backyard. The walnut tree now that it has just about lost all of its leaves was our subject of the day. First we started looking at the way the woodpeckers have over the years made numerous holes in the trunk and large branches. Be sure to click the photo to get a better look.

As we examined the trunk closer, we noticed the change in the texture of the bark shown in the photo below.

I was interested in what was going on with it and I somewhere in my memory have stored away that my husband had once told me that they graft the English walnut onto the black walnut tree because the black walnut is a native of California so it is a hardy tree, resistant to pests but the English walnut has a thinner shell and easier to open and eat.

We decided to ask him more about it and to look it up on the internet once we got inside from our outdoor break.

Here is what we found:

Did you know that California grows 99% of the United States’ walnuts?
That is an average of 303,000 tons of walnuts every year!
The Romans called the walnut Juglans regia or Jupiter’s royal acorn.
My husband was absolutely correct and the English walnut is grafted onto a black walnut rootstock.

Fascinating! I have never noticed the grafting before in all the twenty plus years we have lived in this same house. If you want to know more about the California(English) walnut here is a link to a simple to read explanation. California Walnut

Here is the pile of leaves under the walnut tree. So many leaves to rake but not many nuts due to the resident squirrel and the Scrub jays.

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Barb — 6 Comments

Seed Dispersal in Autumn

We had a terrific windstorm last Friday night which is why there were so many fires here in California. I stood outside under the moon in the warm wind and just soaking it all in. I invited my family to join me and several came out and enjoyed the time just listening to the trees blowing and the leaves as they skittered across the deck. The wind chime was really serenading us and reminding us that the wind has a whole rhythm to itself. Wind music.

All that wind left our yards littered with leaves, small twigs, big branches, seeds, cones, and needles. The above photo shows just a snapshot of how many seeds came down out of the tulip tree. If you click on the photo you will see how the tree disburses its seeds with the little “helicopter style” winged seeds.

I really should have the boys complete the one small square activity on our front grass right now with all the interesting things to be found. If you look carefully you will even see an acorn that some bird had stored somewhere and it fell out of its hiding spot during the storm. There are no oak trees anywhere near this grass so some creature had to bring it here…probably a woodpecker or a Scrub jay. The boys and I had a discussion about how the various trees in our area disperse their seeds.

You can also see the large cone from the magnolia that has already lost all of its beautiful red seeds. There are probably over a hundred of these cones in our front yard right now.

This is a perfect example of how when you examine something up close it is truly amazing. Look at the texture and the pattern! The magnolia tree is always giving us something to look at: beautiful green, glossy leaves, huge fragrant flowers, cones, red seeds. The bees love this tree when it is in bloom.

I could not help but try to capture a few of the red seeds that are left after the storm. I love the reds of the autumn and this one is a bright, cheery red.

This was a very unplanned nature study but very rewarding. We have not had any “weather” at all here except the wind. There hasn’t been a cloud in the sky to look at or an precipitation except for maybe a bit of dew a few mornings. We are experiencing unusually warm weather in the 70’s right now and very dry.

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Barb — 1 Comment

California Buckeye: Outdoor Hour Challenge #38

This week our challenge was to find an elm, hickory, or chestnut tree. In doing research, both in the Handbook of Nature Study and in our field guide, we discovered that a tree that we have an abundance of in our area is actually know as the California buckeye or the California horse chestnut. (Aesculus californica) This tree is more like a tall shrub that grows to between 4 and 12 feet tall.

“The Ohio buckeye is our most common native relative of the horse chestnut. Its leaves have five leaflets instead of seven. The sweet buckeye is also an American species and grows in the Allegheny Mountains.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 649

So we were off to find a buckeye tree to observe this week for our nature study.

My trusty assistant helps gather a fruit to observe and then leave on the ground.

This time of year the buckeye has no leaves so we had to look for the trunk and the fruit of the tree to identify it. In the spring this tree is covered in blossoms and fill the woods with clouds of whiteness. In the summer the trees turn brown and are not quite as lovely.

There is one big difference between a buckeye and a horse chestnut, the seed is highly poisonous so don’t eat it!

Here’s what it says on eNature.com:
“California Indians made flour from the poisonous seeds after leaching out the toxic element with boiling water. The ground, untreated seeds were thrown into pools of water to stupefy fish, which then rose to the surface and were easily caught. Chipmunks and squirrels consume the seeds, but bees are poisoned by the nectar and pollen.”

I really enjoyed this challenge because our whole family learned something about a tree we see in our own neighborhood but we didn’t know much about before this study. I am going to sure to read up on the elm and the hickory to see if I can find some local connections as well.

Posted on November 8, 2008 by Barb — 4 Comments

Sitka Spruce in Oregon: Outdoor Hour Challenge #37

Sitka Spruce

We had our eyes open for a spruce when we were traveling in Oregon and we discovered that the Sitka spruce was in just about every campground that we stayed in this time around.

The cones are interesting and the tree itself is very pretty. If you look closely at this photo, you will see the cones hanging on the branch.

One night we had our tent under a spruce and a storm blew in after we had crawled into our sleeping bags. The trees howled and the rain poured and it was sort of a wild night. In the morning the rain had stopped but we still had the drip, drip of the raindrops from the tree falling on our tent. We at first thought it was still raining until we unzipped the rain fly and realized the sun was peeking out and our “rain” was really just left over drops coming from the spruce.

I guess that’s what happens when you go camping in Oregon during the month of October.

Here are some other photos from that trip that are interesting.

I think this is the perfect mushroom. We saw lots of these when we were hiking and they were something new to me. I think this sparked my interest in “flowerless plants” so that is why they are going to be included for a few weeks in the Outdoor Hour Challenges. The boys and I would like to learn a bit more about mushrooms.

These two are such great travelers. Can I just say now how grateful I am to be able to homeschool them through high school? I think that so many of us get overwhelmed at the idea of homeschooling in the teen years but this is the best part of the whole experience. It is hard, don’t get me wrong. But here we are on a school day in October, standing and taking in the fresh ocean air and the peace of the moment. Right after this they had to find a way to hike down and throw some rocks in the water. There actually was a trail if you looked hard enough. Of course there was some sort of sea cave and that spurred on some more discussion about the power of waves.

This photo shows that not all our time outdoors has to be about nature study. We actually do spend time just throwing the frisbee around the campsite. That is a spruce tree in the background.

Here is something interesting from our trip as well and it tied into our study of trees during this time.

One campground we stayed at in Northern California had a recreated Native American village. This is one of the structures that was a family dwelling and the boys were fascinated by the circular door openings. This area was inhabited by the Yurok tribe and the buildings were all built of local redwoods.

Here is the sweat house in the village. They actually still use this for ceremonial activities.

I am not sure what kind of tree this is but I thought it was just so interesting growing right there out of the cliff along the Pacific Ocean. It was just so nice to look at and enjoy as we took in the horizon.

Okay, enough about trees. This was a great challenge for us and I know I had the advantage of knowing ahead of time that we needed to be looking for spruce trees. Challenge #38 is going to take some ingenuity to find an elm, hickory, or chestnut tree. We are up to the challenge though.

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Barb — 4 Comments

Various Tree Musings

I realized as the weekend went by that I have started noticing tree trunks and how they are all so different. Someone mentioned this in a post and if I remember who it was, I will link to her. She was talking about how she wonders why we always color a tree trunk and branches brown when they are nearly all some other color. I thought this was interesting and ever since reading her thoughts I have been fascinated by the different colors and textures of tree trunks.

Magnolia trunk

Birch trunk

Oak trunk

Our trip to Oregon gave us some good tree memories. Here are a couple of photos and thoughts to go along with them.

Here is one of the tallest trees in the world, if not the tallest. Apparently, the tallest tree changes from time to time and I couldn’t find any solid evidence online to point to this particular tree but we will just say it is one of the top ten tallest trees in the world. Most of the tallest trees are found in Northern California among the redwoods. (Giant sequoias have more mass but are not taller.) I enjoyed the tree no matter how tall it was and just standing at its base, I was humbled. My thoughts turned to how long it has been growing and all the things that have changed in the world since it was a seedling.

This beautiful madrone tree in Oregon caught my eye. I wish now that I had taken a few extra steps to really examine and photograph the color of its bark in light of my current thoughts on trunk colors.

How about this beauty of an oak along the Rogue River in Oregon? It was just perfect for gathering acorns under and for a little shade on a warm autumn day. There were plenty of blackberries still waiting to be picked along this trail as well. We took a long walk along the river and enjoyed the solitude.

As we wind up our study of trees in the next few weeks, I am going to try to focus on the changing of the landscape due to the falling of leaves. I did notice this morning that the weekend’s rainstorm had hastened the falling of many leaves. I have a better view across our little valley and can see more clearly the neighborhood because the view is not obstructed by so many leaves. It is a different landscape…changing but still pretty.

Trees seem to frame my life.

My boys have become more aware of trees these past eight weeks. Having a focus draws attention to a certain aspect of something that we see every day. My middle son takes his dog for a walk each morning and each morning he finds a special leaf to bring to me as I cook breakfast. He always has an explanation for why he picked the leaf and then lays it on the table at my spot for me to enjoy. Something so simple but it has touched me that a fifteen year old boy takes the time to focus his eyes at least for a few minutes each day on something most of us don’t take the time to notice and then make it special for his tree lovin’ mama.

I find myself feeling grateful for these little gifts that nature study has brought into our family’s life.

Posted on October 31, 2008 by Barb — 4 Comments

Autumn Tree Study: Our Family Outdoor Hour Challenge #36

Autumn Tree Study
We continued our tree study with the Sweet Gum or liquidambar tree in our backyard.

We had a huge wind and rain storm last night so the tree has lost most of its leaves.

Here were his observations:

The tree has just about lost its leaves. If you look carefully, perhaps clicking the photo to enlarge it, you will see a little bird on the branch of his tree- just the behind section.

The bark is ragged and rough.

I saw ants and a bit of moss on the trunk.

It didn’t smell like anything.

The leaves under the tree were mostly yellow but some were reddish.

I saw the sticker balls on the ground and some were brown and a few were green and heavy.

Where the leaves have fallen off, there are little buds on the tree.

I think he did a pretty good job of observing his tree. He completed the Seasonal Tree Study notebook page for his journal and it is filed away with the other two pages.

One more season to go.

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Barb — 10 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge #36 Autumn Tree Study

“Children should also become familiar with trees at an early age. They should pick about six in the winter when the leaves are gone, perhaps an elm, a maple, a beech, etc, and watch them during the year. In the winter they will see the color of the bark, the way the branches grow and the thickness of its build.”
Charlotte Mason, volume 1, page 52

The Outdoor Hour Seasonal Tree Study started in the spring and will complete its cycle in the winter. Our family has been anticipating the changes that come with fall. The last week or two has brought about some *huge* changes in our tree and we are anxious to focus this week on our journal pages.

Outdoor Challenge #36
Seasonal Tree Observation-Autumn

1. We started a tree study project way back in Challenge #11 and made our first observations of our tree. Then during the summer we completed a summer observation of the same tree in Challenge #20. If you would like to review this section in the Handbook of Nature Study, you will find it on pages 622-626. This week the challenge includes making the next seasonal observation of your tree. Lesson 172 on page 623 includes five suggestions for studying your tree during autumn. If you are just joining the challenges, pick a tree from your yard, your street, or a near-by park to observe over the course of the next year. Check in the Handbook of Nature Study to see if your tree is listed there and then do the reading about that particular tree. There should be some suggestions for observations that you can follow. You can use the prepared seasonal tree study page to record your observations.

2. Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time to study the tree you are going to observe over the next year. You can take photos of your tree to put in your nature journal or you can sketch the tree in your journal. If you need help with tree sketching you can use this resource.
Clare Walkers’ Tree Guide

3. After your outdoor time, complete your Seasonal Tree Study notebook page or record your tree observations in your nature journal. Take a few minutes to talk about your time outdoors to see if there is anything that your child wants to learn more about. Follow up any interest shown.

You can purchase all of the first ten challenges in a convenient ebook along with custom notebook pages.

Posted on October 19, 2008 by Barb — 4 Comments

Aspen Trees in the Fall-Salmon-And a Bear

What a wonderful afternoon drive we had yesterday! The fall colors were popping out all around us and we were pointing out the car windows, totally amazed at the colorful show we could see as we drove along.

The aspens were glorious and the sun even made a brief showing in the late afternoon.Walking along the path under the aspens, I remembered why I love this variety of tree.

Here is our regular stretch of beach at the lake. We indulged in a picnic dinner of roast chicken and salad and then realized that we were all alone at the beach for the first time ever. It was quiet except for the Stellar’s jays.

The three boys were erecting driftwood and rock sculptures while the rest of us took a walk out onto the dock. The sun was beginning to set and we very reluctantly started back to the car.

Earlier in the afternoon, we also went to see the Kokanee salmon spawning in the creek and these signs were something new in the last few weeks. Apparently there are three mama bears with cubs in this area and they are feasting on salmon during the spawning period.

While we were observing the salmon in the creek….a bear was spotted on the opposite side of the water. The bear was totally and completely uninterested in us humans and she went about its business of eating and foraging around in the bushes. We did get a really great view of the bear and I was too busy watching her to take a photo. I do not have a very good zoom on my little camera so it would probably not have turned out very well anyway. Take my word for it, this was not a scary encounter at all. There were a lot of salmon to occupy the bear and a lot of water inbetween us. We watched for a few minutes and then hiked along the path.

There is nothing mentioned in the Handbook of Nature Study about the salmon but I was surprised to find a section on goldfish. I read over the observation suggestions and they were quite good so we will be including a study of our goldfish when the weather is too yucky to go outside. There is always some way to fit nature study in if you are diligent.

We found a lot of interesting feathers on this hike. I love this polka dotted one the best. I am guessing it is a woodpecker feather but I am not sure.

“The color of feathers and often their shape make some birds more beautiful; while in others, the color of the feathers serves to protect them from the observation of their enemies.”
Handbook of Nature Study, pages 31-32 about feathers as ornaments

What a great day for a family drive, hike, and picnic.

Posted on October 13, 2008 by Barb — 3 Comments

Visiting Maple Tree Country: Outdoor Hour Challenge #34

Our Outdoor Hours this week were spent along the northern California Coast and southern Oregon coast. Our first stop was camping at Humboldt Redwoods (great place for camping) where most of the tallest trees in the world live. We saw ancient redwoods towering overhead.

These trees are so tall and grow so densely that the forest floor is dark and quiet. It is quite the experience to hike along the trail and silently observe these magnificent trees up close.

The forest seemed to have its own atmosphere in and among the trees. The mist in some areas was high up in the canopy of the redwoods and it was dripping down on our heads as we hiked underneath.

In some parts of the redwood forest, it seemed as if the light never penetrated down to the floor and there were mushrooms and moss growing everywhere. It was like stepping back in time.

Mixed in among these forest giants are Big leaf maples. This time of year they are a brilliant yellow and orange and the leaves are *large*. My tree book says that the leaves are between 16 and 24 inches long.

Here is a leaf I saw on the ground that shows how big they are in real life.

“It is its autumn transfiguration which has made people observant of the maple’s beauty; yellow, orange, crimson, and scarlet foliage makes these trees gorgeous when October comes.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 628

This leaf was on a tree in Ashland, Oregon in Lithia Park. The trees in the park were just turning colors as we walked through last weekend. It was really cold and the air had a bite to it. We bundled up and enjoyed the walk.

After this trip along the Pacific coast, I have thought a lot about our dependence on wood from trees. We passed many areas in the forest where it had been clear cut, leaving nothing left standing to speak of. There were many, many lumber mills and great stacks of both logs and lumber.

Here is a stack of logs that we passed in the town of Eureka, CA. You cannot even imagine how tall and long these piles of logs are but this gives you an idea. It is a big reminder how useful certain trees are in our every day life. Look around you at this very moment and you will no doubt see lots of things made from wood.

I know that trees are a renewal resource but it does make you stop and think when you see so many areas clear-cut and then the piles of logs sitting at the mills. It truly is a balancing act….the love of the forest and the love of wood products.

Just a some thoughts as we travel along on this trip.

Posted on October 6, 2008 by Barb — 5 Comments

Land of Oaks and Pines Part Two-Connections to the Past: Outdoor Hour Challenge #33

We have a variety of oaks in our yard and on closer inspection, we have a lot of baby oak trees as well. The more we looked, the more seedlings we found to observe.

I pulled some out for us to examine the roots….they were really long.

Here is the oak seedling we pulled out and you could still see the remains of the original acorn too. Just what I need, an oak tree growing under the magnolia tree. Crazy thing is that I know how this acorn ended up far from the mother oak. Western scrub jays will poke acorns into the garden in various spots as a means of storage. They will not come back and find all the acorns and that allows a new tree to sprout far from the original oak.

Here is another kind of oak growing in the backyard.

We collected a number of leaves to examine indoors and to try to identify which kinds of oaks we have in the backyard.The different shapes of leaves were interesting to note. We had big leaves and little leaves. They were shiny or dull, pointed or rounded, and in a variety of shades of greens.

Here is the collection.

California Black Oak-leaves are really large and have deep lobes and bristle tips

Either Interior Live Oak or Canyon Live Oak-I need to go do some more close observation of the trunks and acorns

I am pretty sure this is a Valley Oak.

I can not believe there are so many different kinds of oaks right here in our backyard. We are literally surrounded by oaks. I didn’t even collect leaves from all of them. I know we have a California Scrub Oak in the far back of the property.

Now for the great acorns we collected at my parent’s house. Look at that big guy. He is a beauty. I am fairly certain it came from an Interior Live Oak tree.

The Native Americans in our area used the acorns as a staple in their diet. They collected the acorns and stored them in granaries. They would grind the acorns up to make a flour. Here is a link that explains it simply. The Indian Grinding Rock State Park is near where I live and it is a fascinating place to visit to get an idea of how the acorn was used by the Miwok Indians. Actually there is a place on the creek near my parent’s house that has grinding rocks that were used by the Miwok that inhabited the area before the California Gold Rush. The oak trees were a vital part of their lives.

Category: trees