In Ecology Verde we have proposed, on countless occasions, the realization of outdoor activities, either alone, as a couple or family. Walks through forests, picnics on the arrival of good weather and excursions to places we did not know are economic, healthy and ecological ways to spend leisure time, in addition to very entertaining, pleasant and didactic.
In one of these excursions to the forest you can go further and play with your family and friends to identify the trees only by examining their leaves. It is a very funny activity that will make you learn a lot about the trees of your region in a very short time. Next, we explain how Identify trees from the leaves.
General culture about trees
To do this, we will identify the trees that are present in the region or forest in which we are going to explore. It is necessary to do it in advance, since in a single country there can be up to 700 different species of them and not delimit the circle would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. For example, in Spain there are approximately 7,000 million trees. Surely, the list of the most common trees facilitates the entertaining task. Although the most predominant tree in the Spanish territory is the oak, followed by some species of pine and others such as oak or beech, it will depend a lot on the region in which you live or go to visit. Thus, in areas closer to the sea, more exotic plants will abound, such as palm trees and in other provinces to the south with different climate and characteristics of the land, as is the case of the Canarian archipelago, it is more common to find the Canarian pine, sabina or cedar.
Before exit to the park or forest, We will learn the basics of the most predominant trees of our region. The form they present, their size, the shape of their trunk or leaves or the characteristics of the tree itself. Prepare for this a presentation in Power Point to see as a family or visualize, in company, one of the many instructional videos on it that you will find.
Exit to explore trees and its leaves
Once we have a basic idea of how the closest trees are and we can distinguish without problems a holm oak of an eucalyptus, it is time to put comfortable boots and go out to evade in nature. Each team member can carry a basket or similar where he will keep the leaves that he finds, trying to find the most original and those that no one has taken until then.
Examining the leaves of the trees to identify them
Once you feel to eat in the forest, or at home, put together all the leaves to start the entertaining game of guessing which one is. When examining a sheet to identify a tree, you have to take into account your shape, size, color and morphology of the rib (The “bones” of the leaves):
The morphology of a sheet can be in very different ways and it is difficult to capture them to the first, if you are a beginner. For example, we can find it wide and flat, narrow, lobed or palmated. The form of the sheet will also allow us to classify them into two large groups: perennial or expired.
- The perennial leaf trees They can have the sheet in flat form (the most common), acicular (such as a knit needle), linear (styling or elongated) or escualiforiform, that is, with scales.
- The deciduous They present leaves in palmated form, with tips (the typical autumn leaf we use for Halloween decoration), oval (wider than linear), armored (the lower part remembers a heart), rounded (such as an apple), composite leaves and many other varieties.
Surely, once its form is identified, we are forging an idea of what type of tree can be, recovering the teachings previously learned. In a second examination, more exhaustive, we will explore if they have fruits, how are your edges and your rib To give us more clues.
Some leaves are easier to identify than others, so, if in the first exit to the forest we fail to know which belongs to each tree, we should not discourage. Let us not do it is the most normal. It will help a lot to create a mural at home where to hit the leaves identified with the name of the tree underneath and thus build a graph that will expand after each excursion and that will end up making us experts in the flora of our region.
Examples of some trees and their leaves
It would be impossible to describe all, but many of the trees we know have very simple leaves to classify. For example, the fir, that tree associated with Christmas, has needle -shaped leaves that we will identify immediately. Likewise, there are different trees whose leaves we can identify quickly if we know them correctly:
- The holm oakthe predominant tree in the Iberian Peninsula par excellence (in fact 1 in 5 trees in our country is an oak) has leaves that have easily identifiable morphology.
- He chestnutwhich gives us delicious perfect fruits to roast in autumn, presents a green or yellow compound sheet (as the station progresses) and you will identify, among other things, its edges look like small fangs.
- Surely you will have heard about asha very abundant tree in the province of Castilla y León, of fine and tall trunk. Its leaves are elongated, composed and opposite is born to each other.
- The Roblesthe strong tree that lives many years, hence the popular saying, they have wide and knotty leaves with unequal edges.
- The Olmos They are very wide -cup, their leaves are also composed, but they are born alternate, there are simple and asymmetric and asymmetric at the base. In addition, they end at a very pronounced tip.
Apps to identify trees by leaves
New technologies, once again, give us a faster possibility to identify trees and know exactly if we have succeeded in our divinatory attempt or not. We recommend you Leafsnap applicationone of the most revolutionary in the market in this area, which will tell you in second to what type of tree a sheet belongs after having photographed it with your mobile. Its main problem is that, being developed in the United States, including fundamentally American species, so it is possible that some native tree will remain unidentified.
To do this, that of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) developed a similar application based on the wild trees of the Iberian Peninsula (and islands) called Arbolapp. It includes 118 species of trees and is available for free from the usual application markets. The drawings and data that accompany it will allow you to learn a lot and very fast on the trees of your region.
Other similar ones are Leaf and Flowerwhich allows to learn from descriptions of structure and form, explore differences or list characteristics of the tree flowers, or others such as Plant Tracker. If, in addition to the leaves, you want to identify the flowers, we recommend you try the app Like that gardenwhich identifies the flowers through photography and flower Garden, which presents us with the most relaxing experience.
Discover in this other Ecology article more about the different applications to recognize trees and plants.
Websites to identify a tree by the type of leaf
Internet websites also provide us with numerous options. Although the best quality we have found are in English, there are also many in Spanish that allow you to identify the tree filtering certain characteristics, such as Trees of the world. To do this, all you have to do is select the data that fits the sheet in front of you. If it is simple, composed, the form that you present or the characteristics of its edges. Upon reaching the end of the search, you will get, not only the botanical name of the species itself, but also the peculiarities of that tree, which surely interests you very much to know.
We guarantee that, after one or two months developing this family game, your knowledge about the trees of your region, how they live, what fruits they give and various curiosities, will have expanded a lot. Learning to know the flora of your region will also help the little ones to love and respect natural species, as well as to ensure them when they become adults, something that will serve as a valuable lesson for the future.
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