I am involved in a project which in part, involves getting photos of twigs of trees and large shrubs, focusing especially on buds, leaf scars and other characteristics that are helpful in their identification. I must admit before this I had never spent a lot of time using such minute characteristics to identify trees. Instead I would consider the type of habitat the tree was growing in and rely on its overall form, as well as the bark characteristics. So this project was a challenge, especially since it relied on a fairly precise form of macro photography. I've explained a little about my macro technique at the end of this post.
I'm not sure exactly how many I have photographed so far, but well over one hundred species. This has involved a lot of time looking through the camera, as well as countless hours processing the images afterwards. But it has been an eye-opener in some ways.
Lots of the buds and leaf scars are extremely small, and at first glance one doesn't look a whole lot different than another. But a closer look just highlights the tremendous diversity there is. This first one is Black Maple, an uncommon tree in Canada limited primarily to southern Ontario. It has fine gray hairs on the cluster of terminal buds.
This next one does not have any legal status, although it is extremely rare in Ontario. It is known as Pawpaw, and at least from the historical data, is more common in Chatham-Kent than any other municipality in Ontario, which is a bit surprising given the overall lack of forest cover in C-K.
Next are a few of the hickories found in Ontario. First up is Bitternut Hickory, fairly common in southern Ontario deciduous woods. It is readily identifiable with its bright yellow buds.
These next few are shrubs. First is Flowering Dogwood, an endangered species in Canada. This first image of it shows the non-flowering buds.
Ash trees are on the decline in southern Ontario. For more on that topic, check out this previous blog post. This first image shows the terminal buds and twig characteristics of Black Ash, which occurs in quite wet habitat.
In comparison is Red Ash, with its densely hairy stem. It is, or at least was, one of the most common ash species in southern Ontario.
|A cross-section of a Blue Ash stem|
Another rare and declining tree is Butternut, legally endangered due to a canker that has killed many individuals.
The unofficial flagship tree species of the Carolinian Life Zone is the Tuliptree, with its distinctive buds.
Oaks are plentiful across the Ontario landscape. Their buds and twigs aren't always that distinctive, but in these next two examples I show White Oak, with its reddish, hairless twigs.....
An extremely abundant shrub across southern Ontario, is Staghorn Sumac. Its twigs are densely hairy.
Another shrub is Wayfaring Viburnum, native to Europe but commonly planted for ornamental purposes and as a food source for birds. The leaf buds are very different from almost every other species I have seen so far.
And last, but not least, is this next one: Cherry Birch. It is native, legally endangered, and limited to one site in all of Canada, in the Niagara peninsula.
All of the above photos were taken with a full frame camera, a 100mm macro lens, and up to 68mm of extension tubes. Even at that, some of the photos were cropped. Almost all are at life size or more, although the photos as shown here are actually much greater than life size. The depth of field at this magnification is extremely shallow, in some cases only a couple of millimetres, so I have had to use flash, as well as a flash diffuser. I have also had the camera set-up on a tripod with a ball head, and a focusing rail which enables me to fine tune the focus to fractions of a millimetre.
So next time you are out hiking or birding during the leafless season, take a moment or two to explore and enjoy the interesting examples of nature's design all around you, including twigs. You might have to reverse your binoculars and use them as a magnifying lens to see some of the features.