The Most Common North American Hardwood Trees
The Red Maple
You’ll find the Red Maple growing in a variety of areas ranging from eastern Canada to the midwestern U.S. It’s one of the most common trees in North America, especially throughout its northeastern range. The Red Maple is a deciduous tree, so it sheds its leaves in fall and grows new ones every spring. Its leaves are bright green in spring and summer, but turn yellow and red during the autumn months.
The Black Cherry Tree
The black cherry tree is a medium-sized deciduous tree that is native to eastern North America. The black cherry can grow up to 90 feet tall and can live for more than 100 years. It has distinctive, smooth bark that you may recognize by the name “cherry.” Many people have used this tree for making homemade cherry cough syrup, due to its medicinal qualities. Not only does the black cherry offer edible fruit and unique bark, it also provides a beautiful wood that is greatly valued in the manufacturing of furniture.
The Black Cherry Tree
This hardwood tree is a valuable source of lumber because of its beauty and ease of use. The wood has a reddish brown color which, when polished, results in furniture with an elegant look. Black cherry wood takes stain well but only needs polishing to bring out its natural luster, making it ideal for many applications without additional treatments or excessive coatings. This wood is popular among furniture manufacturers because it works easily with tools and machines while still retaining its natural beauty.
Oak Trees
The most common North American hardwood tree is the oak. There are more than 90 species of oaks, divided into two main groups: red and white. The white oak group includes bur, swamp chestnut, chinkapin and post oak. Red oaks include black, southern red and pin oak. Oaks produce acorns as a food source for wildlife, including turkeys, deer and small rodents such as squirrels.
Hickory Trees
- Hickory trees are native to the Eastern United States.
- The bark is very shaggy and this tree produces large, divided leaves of 7-17 leaflets.
- Hickory wood is very hard, heavy and strong.
Black Walnut
Black Walnut is another very common North American hardwood and is noted for its dark, almost chocolate brown color. In many cases, the wood has a purplish hue and it often contains streaks of lighter browns. The wood itself is coarse textured and frequently contains knots. If you’re looking for black walnut lumber, you’ll have no trouble finding it – the tree was once commonly used for furniture making because of its rich color and easy workability – but these days, most black walnut is sold as veneer rather than solid lumber. This tree is also known as Eastern Black Walnut or American Black Walnut and it’s found in abundance throughout the eastern half of the United States.
Yellow Birch
Yellow Birch: A popular choice for furniture and flooring due to its attractive grain and pale coloring, the yellow birch is a hardwood tree that’s distributed throughout the Great Lakes region of North America. The tree does well in wet areas, so it can be found near streams or swamps. The bark of the tree is aromatic when crushed.
American Ash
You might think that American Ash is a true ash because of its common name. After all, it even has the word “ash” right there in its name! Strangely, though, it’s not actually a true ash. In fact, it’s not even in the same family as most of the other trees that are commonly known as ash trees. Instead of being an ash tree like we thought, it’s actually a member of the Olive family.
Native to North America, groups of American Ash grow together at higher elevations—and these groups can be massive! Scientists believe that some groves could be up to 2,000 years old and have been growing together for their whole lives. If you want to see some for yourself just head to your nearest mountain range and start searching!
American Ash is a medium-sized tree (between 50 ft and 80 ft tall) with branches that look feathery and light when they have their leaves on them—which they do between April and May each year. Unfortunately, they don’t last long after they appear; instead they fall off during July or August. What makes this tree so different from other trees that lose their leaves?
The answer is simple: American Ash keeps its seeds on its branches throughout winter until spring arrives—so when you see these trees with no leaves on them in December or January you’ll still be able to spot their large clusters of seeds hanging from the branches above your head
Beech Trees
Beech trees produce nuts that are eaten by many different kinds of wildlife, including humans! They’re a popular snack for squirrels, bluejays and other birds, chipmunks and mice. You might have even found yourself snacking on beech tree nuts as a kid.
Beech trees are deciduous. This means they lose their leaves every year in the wintertime. The leaves turn bright yellow before they fall off the tree.
Beech trees are valuable because their wood is sturdy and beautiful. Beech is often used to make furniture or flooring in homes. Beech trees grow at different rates depending on where they live and what kind of soil they grow in, but generally speaking it takes them about 80 years to reach maturity.
Sycamore Trees
The sycamore tree is one of the most common trees in North America, and a quick look at its roots shows why. The tree grows in almost every state east of the Rocky Mountains and across the majority of Canada’s eastern provinces. It has several different varieties and can grow up to 100 feet tall with a wide canopy that can span 150 feet or more.
It’s easy to identify these hardwood trees by their bark which is pale greenish-gray when it first emerges on young branches, then darkens to gray as it ages leaving behind distinctive tan marks where previous years’ bark has fallen off. Their leaves are 3 to 6 inches long that tend to have five blunt points and rough uneven teeth around their edge. These leaves are often mottled with varying shades of green, yellow, and white giving them an attractive speckled appearance
Sycamores grow quickly but tend to be short lived due to disease or rot leading many homeowners who plant them for shade in residential areas to replace them within 30 years. They are also susceptible to pest infestation from aphids which can lead to an unwanted buildup of honeydew on nearby cars or furniture during summer months unless controlled by pesticides. Despite this downside these trees produce durable wood used for furniture making flooring paneling boxes crates pallets among other things.
North America is home to many beautiful hardwood trees.
North America is home to many beautiful hardwood trees. In fact, over half of the world’s hardwood trees are located here! Hardwood trees are popular as a source of lumber, but they also contribute to a healthy environment and can be used in making furniture and many other wood products. A hardwood tree is one whose woody tissue consists mainly of water-conducting cells called tracheids. Hardwoods generally have broad leaves and produce fruit such as acorns or berries, whereas softwoods have needles and produce seeds that are enclosed by cones.
Hardwoods are important for the environment because they store carbon dioxide in their leaves, branches and roots which helps reduce greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. This makes them an excellent renewable resource for producing fuel or bioenergy products such as ethanol from corn stover – leftover material after harvest time that would otherwise go unused!