How to Identify Trees By Leaf Bud Appearance

Beech tree

• Beech trees are deciduous, so their buds are visible in the winter.
• The buds are small and clustered at the ends of the twigs. They have a single pointed tip, which is reddish-brown.
• Beech tree bud scales are narrow and long, but not hairy.

Magnolia tree

Magnolia trees have leaf buds that are usually covered in a reddish-brown fuzzy coating. Their buds are usually wider than they are long, and appear in pairs.

Maple tree

• You should also note that maples have two kinds of buds. The first kind is small, round and reddish. The second type is larger, pointed and shiny.
• Look for paired buds along the twig and note their size, shape and color.

Hickory tree

• Hickory is a deciduous tree with a slow growth rate and long life of up to 200 years.
• The crown has 1, 2 or 3 trunks, often with a crooked form.
• The smooth gray bark is marked by diamond-shaped, dark gray to black scaly ridges that run vertically down the trunk and branches, but become more horizontally arranged on older trees.
• There are more than 16 species of hickory trees in the United States. All have compound leaves made of five leaflets, except for some pecan trees — a type of hickory — which have nine or 11 leaflets per leaf. Some hickories are large enough to be used as shade or windbreak trees, while others may be suited only for shrub borders. A few varieties are prized for their strong wood that’s used for tool handles and smoking meat.

Hickories flower in May and produce nuts that ripen from September through November, depending on the species and location. Leaves fall from the trees in autumn when they turn shades of yellow, red and brown before dropping to the ground in winter.

Juglans nigra

Juglans nigra, the eastern black walnut, is a species of deciduous tree in the walnut family, Juglandaceae, native to eastern North America. It grows mostly in riparian zones, from southern Ontario, west to southeast South Dakota, south to Georgia, northern Florida and southwest to central Texas. Wild trees in the upper Ottawa Valley may be an isolated native population or may have derived from planted trees. It has been extirpated

Arizona and California.

Sassafras tree

The first thing to look for when identifying Sassafras trees by their buds is the color. Sassafras buds are bright orange or red, whereas the buds of most other trees are a dull brown.

The second thing to look for is the shape of the bud. On most leafy trees, the onset of spring means that tiny bumps appear on each branch, from which new leaves will grow. These bumps then swell and unfold into leaves over several days as spring progresses. Sassafras has evolved this system differently from most other trees; instead of unfolding as they grow, its buds remain tightly closed until just before they bloom open in one burst. Its dormant buds are small and round like those on other trees, but unlike on any other tree these buds resemble tiny acorns rather than little leaves-in-waiting.

In a more technical vein:

• Lauraceae: 5 genera (including Sassafras) & 15 species
• Oleaceae: 10 genera & 400 species