Saturday, August 19, 2006

Trees, trees, trees (and more)

The Dendrology at Virginia Tech website has info on trees of its region, plus links to other tree sites. There's quite a variety of information here, including The Meaning of Latin Names and a clickable map of native species, state by state, with info on the species (Oregon results shown here as an example). It also has advice on selecting trees for urban environments. And more.

4 comments:

Barb Szyszkiewicz said...

So COOL!
When I was a junior in high school, our Advanced Biology texts were delayed until Christmas. The teacher basically did any units of study she could, without a book for us. We did trees for the first 6 weeks of school. She collected samples, had us learn to identify them by Latin name, bark, leaf, fruit....so much of those lessons has stuck with me today.

Kathryn Judson said...

Barb, Oh, good, a kindred spirit! And hooray for your teacher!

I stumbled on this site today while trying to figure out what in the world one of the trees in my front yard is. I'm still not quite certain of my tree, but I'm having a blast with the detective work. (And I got to watch a warbler while I was outside studying leaves and fruit. Very cool.)

When I was in college, there was a massive renaming of plants, to make the scientific names more consistent. I got to help go through the herbarium and rename and refile plant samples. Very interesting. I'm afraid not a lot has stuck with me this long, though. (I think I'm older than you. Can I use that as an excuse? :)

Barb Szyszkiewicz said...

I have to say that out of everything I learned in that class that year, the Tree lesson was the one that stuck the best.
I have a tree in my yard that I have yet to identify so I hope these sites are helpful.
And I'm 41, so maybe I'm older than you think I am ;)

Kathryn Judson said...

Barb, I'm in my 40s, too - for a few weeks yet...