 If you watch Common Ground online, consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org. Lakeland Public Television presents Common Ground made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota. Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations. Member, FDIC. Welcome to Common Ground. I'm your host, Scott Knudson. In this episode, due to popular demand, biologist and ecologist Rob Knudson, my father, returns to teach us how to identify the common evergreens of northern Minnesota. My name is Rob Knudson. I'm a biologist, ecologist and a retired teacher. And two years ago, we did a program for Common Ground where I helped you learn the deciduous trees of north central Minnesota and tried to learn them by the leaves in the bark. Today, we're going to do a follow-up to that program where we take the things that people normally call pine trees, the conifers, and sort them out. If you'd like to review the deciduous tree program, just go to the link at the bottom of the screen. Okay, today, we're going to take a look at the evergreens, what most people call the pines, and we're going to learn to identify them from the needles, from the trunks, and from the shape of the tree. It's not really correct to call these trees pines, because pines is simply one of the groups that we have around here. We have other genuses. We have pines. We have spruces. We have furs. We have larches. And we have cedars also. The best term to use to describe these trees are conifers. Now, the word conifer is actually Latin Greek. Anytime you see the term ifra, offra, ifra, like conifer, ifra refers to the bearer of something, and obviously conifer refers to the bearer of cones, referring to the way that these trees reproduce. These trees all reproduce using cones instead of flowers. Most deciduous trees that have fruit reproduce with flowers and are pollinated by insects. The smell right here is just wonderful. These happen to be wild plums, but the same thing is true of these Nanking cherries and pin cherries and choke cherries and crab apples. In most of the species of conifers, the trees that reproduce with cones, the male pollen cones, which you can see here on this jack pine and here on this red pine, are located at the bottom of the tree. So when the wind blows the pollen from the male pollen cones, the female cones, which turn into the things we normally call pine cones, are located usually at the top of the tree. The pollen from a tree does not pollinate the female cones of the same tree, so we get cross pollination. Cross pollination, getting genetic material from two parents, the advantage of cross pollination is that ensures that in the next generation of pine trees there's going to be some variation. If you have variation, if everybody's a little bit different, then you can have some of the trees a little better suited to live where they do than the other ones. And those are the ones that live long enough to reproduce and they pass on those genes to the next generation and you have a better adapted tree. That's why trees are different from state to state and even from area to area within the same state. In the conifers, it's actually at least a two-year process from the time that the pollen fertilizes the eggs in the female cone until the cone actually matures, dries out, opens up and sheds its seeds. So much of the culture we have in northern Minnesota revolves around our forests and our coniferous trees and it really is a lot more fun to be able to walk through the woods and recognize what it is that you're looking at. It's early May in northern Minnesota and it'd be a great time to take a walk in the woods and look at some of our common evergreens. We'll take a look at the needles, we'll take a look at the bark and we'll take a look at the general shape of the tree for comparison purposes. Let's start with one of the very common evergreens in northern Minnesota, the red pine, also known as a Norway pine. It's real common, growing wild in the forest and in large plantations. This is a nice stand of approximately 50-year-old red pine. Look at the color of the bark. Look at the size of the needles and the shape of the tree. These are red pines. You can see how much this tree grew every year when it was small. When these branches were the top side branches, the top of the tree was right there. When these branches were the side branches, this was the top of the tree. One year has grown, there's another year, there's another year. Then you can see it going up the tree. You can tell the red pine again by the color of the bark. Here's the white pine, another real common species of evergreen in northern Minnesota, known for its beautiful white wood used for paneling and other construction. Here's a real good example of the typical profile of a white pine. Here's the needles on the branch of a white pine. The one pine that you may confuse this one with is the red pine, but the white pine has very, very soft needles as compared to the red pine, which are much stiffer and they're bigger. If you wanted to get technical about it, the white pine, the needles occur in bunches of five, whereas on the red pine there's only two. The white pine needles are also significantly smaller than the red pine needles, which are the biggest needles we have on any pine. White pines also have the biggest cones of any of the conifers that we have in northern Minnesota. Six, eight inches long at least. The seeds have fallen out of these cones. Last fall probably. This is a white pine. Here's a white pine and you can see, as you look up the trunk, how much that white pine grew each year by the position of the nodes where the branches come out. That top one you can see that it grew almost three feet in one year. This is a white pine. Here's an example of one of the things that can happen to a white pine here in northern Minnesota. Two years ago this tree was almost completely stripped of its bark by a porcupine. And if you look you can see that the pine tree has secreted a whole bunch of sap trying to cover up its wounds, but this one's so substantially stripped that I'm pretty sure this one will be dead in the next year or two. Here is a great comparison of a mature white pine on the right and a mature red pine on the left. Note the difference in the bark. This rather ragged looking conifer is another one of the pines. This one you can see is not tall and straight like a red pine. Pretty typical, one of the most common trees that we have in northern Minnesota. You might notice that its needles are shorter than either a red pine or a white pine. This is in fact a pine. This is jack pine. The tree itself can be just about any shape and this is a very typical looking jack pine tree. You can see the bark is just kind of a rough bark, but this is what they look like. This is jack pine, one of the most common trees in northern Minnesota. On this jack pine, you can see on these lower branches, you can see the pollen cones that are starting to form. In another month or so, these will be releasing gobs and gobs and gobs of pollen. And then way up at the top of the tree, you'll see where most of the seed cones are located. This is a jack pine. Okay, right here, this lowest branch that we see is a jack pine. Take a note of the length of the needles and the color and the shape of the branch. Look right above it. Right above it, you have a tree that looks kind of like a jack pine, but the needles are longer and a little bit more of a blue-green color than a dark-green color. That tree right there occurs around northern Minnesota mostly in plantations. That is what most people call a scotch pine. Technically, the proper name for it is a scotch pine and it was imported from Europe and it's planted in plantations, but we happen to have one right here. It's easily confused with jack pine, but jack pine has shorter needles and they're darker green. Scotch pine has longer needles and not as long as white pine or red pine, but longer than a jack pine. Okay, here's a good comparison between an eastern white pine and a scotch pine. We compared it to jack pine already. The scotch pine has shorter needles, thicker needles than the white pine and they're a little bit more of a bluish tinge to them than the white pine. You can see the white pine has much finer needles and they're greener than the scotch pine. Here we have the most common spruce in northern Minnesota, the northern white spruce. Check out the nice conical shape which is an adaptation for shedding snow. Here's a great example of a probably 100 plus year old white spruce tree, totally mature with a nice white pine in the background for a comparison. Okay, this is white spruce, but I want you to note how much variation there can be from one tree to another. Okay, this is white spruce. This is also white spruce. How much longer the needles are on this one than that one? How much more blue they are on this one than this one? These are kind of the extremes. This one has shorter needles, this one has longer, they're both pokey. It all has to do with where the tree is growing, how much light it gets, how much water it gets, how crowded they are, how stressed they are. They're not all exactly the same, but they're both pokey branches. This is white spruce. Here's a young white spruce. Note the texture of the bark, the pokiness of the needles. This particular one is probably 11 or 12 years old. Count the nodes. This is a real good example of a Colorado blue spruce. You can see that it's more bluish-colored than our white spruce that we have around here. I know it's Colorado blue spruce because I planted it myself, so it's planted in somebody's yard. Things that you'll notice right away is the needles are longer than the white spruce, and it's very definitely even pokier than white spruce that we have around here. This is Colorado blue spruce. Along with white spruce and ornamental Colorado blue spruce, you may encounter two more kinds of spruce as you get around northern Minnesota. If you were to go farther north and east of here, up in, to say, the Boundary Waters canoe area, you'd find some that look kind of like this, only they're darker. Those are called black spruce. We don't have many of those right where we're filming, so I don't have an example. And if you're out in the woods and you come across a plantation of spruce that don't look right, those are probably Norway spruce. Again, usually it don't happen in the woods. Sometimes you see them along the sides of roads, but usually they're in plantations for Christmas trees. Okay, here is a fairly classic example of a branch from a balsam fir. What I'd like you to notice and to try to remember about a balsam fir is if you see a branch where the needles are fairly flattened, that's probably a balsam, and the needles themselves are flat. And you can grab a balsam fir and it's nice and soft. Needles on a balsam fir are nice and flat. The branch is also flat and they're soft to the touch. You can run your hand over them and you feel no pain. Now for comparison, this is the balsam fir. This is white spruce. Now you might notice that the white spruce has usually shorter needles. These needles are not flat on the surface. The needles themselves are not flat. And when you grab a white spruce, it pokes you. Balsam fir is nice and soft, doesn't poke, white spruce is kind of pokey. Balsam fir on the right and white spruce on the left. Compare the needles. Kind of an interesting note when it comes time to have a Christmas tree. White spruce makes a beautiful Christmas tree, but it has a tendency to smell real bad in the house. On the other hand, balsam is that tree that leaves that really, really nice aroma. A little hint possibly to hunters. Balsam, when you smash the needles, gives off that real strong balsam smell and deer are used to smelling that. One thing that I would suggest is a good idea if you're going to walk in the woods, if you drop a balsam branch to the ground and scrub your feet on it, like that, it'll mask the human odor. Here's a good example of a mature white pine. And then right to the left of it here, we have an opportunity to see a medium-sized balsam fir and white spruce side by side. Compare the tips. Look at how uniform the tip of the balsam fir is compared to the white spruce on the left. They aren't always this way, but as a general rule, this is the way they're going to look. And then compare the bark. Here's a balsam fir. And then for comparison, look at the bark on the balsam fir and compare it to this similar-sized white spruce. Here you can see some sap bubbles in the bark of a balsam fir. One interesting thing that you can see exceptionally well on balsam fir is you can see the growth pattern of the branches. If you look right up here, right at the tip of the branch, you can see, and again, this is May, you can see three brand new little branches starting to grow. Next year at this time, these three branches will look like these three branches. Last spring at this time of the year, this spot looked like that spot. The year before that, this spot looked like that spot. That's one year growth, another year growth, and by next fall, this will be that long, and it'll have two new branches. This will have two new branches and a new one there. And if you look at the whole branch, you can see that this branch is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven years old where I broke it off, and you can also see that by the fifth, sixth, and seventh years, it's starting to lose its needles, and that's why when you see a branch on a tree, there are no needles next to the trunk of the older branches because they lose them after five or six years. Here's a rather interesting group of conifers. These, they have a bark that's similar to a spruce, but if you look, they have a really, really fine looking needle. These are actually a type of larch. This is tamarack, and they always grow in low swampy areas. They're tolerant of a lot of water. You can see the yellow cow slips down in the water. If you look very, very closely, you can see thousands and thousands of little seed cones at the tops of these trees. This is the only species of larch that we have in northern Minnesota. And in days gone by, they use the really large tamaracks to make railroad ties. These are kind of neat because they're the one species of conifers around here that actually dropped their needles during the wintertime. If we were to take this same shot in October or November, these would all be yellow. And then by the middle of the winter, they're bare. They're just starting to grow new needles right now. By mid-summer, the needles will be about twice as big as they are right now. These are tamarack. Take a quick look at this tamarack branch, and you can really easily see the pollen cones of the tamarack there. And here is a seed cone from last year. And that's all the bigger they get on a tamarack. Here's an example of a branch of northern white cedar, sometimes called arborvite. It usually grows down in low areas that are wet cedar swamps. Maybe you've heard that term. You might notice that the needles on this are totally different than anything we've looked at so far. They're flat, they're not sharp, they're soft. This is northern white cedar, a favorite winter forage for a deer. Here's a nice example of northern white cedar. If you look at the bark on the trunk, you can see that it's a finer bark than most of the actual pines and spruces. And it'll pull off in little strips. Usually this grows down in swamps, but this one happens to be one of the few cedars you'll find growing on higher ground. This is a northern white cedar. This is a typical place where northern white cedar grows, low and wet. You can also see that there's some balsam and even some birch in here and several other kinds of deciduous trees. Say cedar swamp. Here's something kind of interesting. We're down in the cedar swamp and here's a nice fresh timber wolf track. Here's the four toes and there's his pad right there. You can see how big he is compared to my hand. That's not a real big one. Now let's do a quick review of what we've actually seen in our walk through the forest and get ready for a little quiz at the end of the program. Let's do a quick review of the things that are actually pines. They're in the genus of the pines. This again is white pine, soft needles about three inches long, five needles per bunch. White pine. The red pine, which has a little bit more coarse needles and they come in batches of two. The jack pine, which the needles are shorter and kind of twisted around the same as the tree is. This particular one has some pollen cones on it. And finally the Scotch pine or Scotts pine, which is not native to northern Minnesota. Oftentimes confused with the jack pine. Scotts pine, jack pine, red pine, and white pine. Okay, let's take a look at the spruces and the one tree that may be confused with a spruce. This again is northern white spruce. Note the length of the needles. Sharp needles go all the way around. Can be light green all the way to more of a blue color, but that's the one you find out in the woods. This one is ornamental blue spruce, Colorado blue spruce. This is the one you usually see in town, planted in people's yards. Longer needles, real pokey. Hard to grab. And this is balsam, which is not a spruce, it's a fir. And again, flatter branches, flat needles, nice and soft to the touch as opposed to pokey to the touch. Balsam fir, Colorado blue spruce, and northern white spruce. And finally these two, which are significantly different than the other branches that we've looked at. This was northern white cedar. It's the only cedar that we have. Remember, red cedar is actually a type of juniper. Flat branches, very, very fleshy needles, not sharp at all. And this one, our only species of larch, which is tamarack. And the needles on this one, remember, are deciduous. They fall up in the fall. And this is may, so these are brand new needles. They will get a little bit longer than this. This is tamarack, which is a species of larch, and northern white cedar. Now let's have a little pre-quiz to see if you can remember some of the things you've been looking at. First of all, let's look at these two. Both of them have long needles. These needles are softer than these. These are longer than these. These are darker green than these. These are in bunches of five, and these are in bunches of two. This was red pine, and this is eastern white pine. Now these two, this is the one that's real common just about everywhere around northern Minnesota. Shorter needles than either the white pine or the red pine. Kind of not as neat of a pattern as the white pine or the red pine. This is the one that's a real scruffy tree, doesn't have any particular pattern to the tree. And this is the one that comes from Europe that sometimes is confused with this. And this one will be in plantations. This one is just about everywhere. This is jack pine, real common, and this was scott's pine. These are the four kinds of pines that we have around here. Okay, here are the shorter needleed trees around here, the ones that are more conical shaped when you'll see them in the woods. This was the one that's really, really common around here, comes in many different colors. This was the one that came from out west that you see in people's yard. Both of those are the ones with the pokey needles, longer needles, shorter needles. This is the one that had a similarly shaped tree but the needles are flat and not pokey at all. Okay, this one is white spruce, Colorado blue spruce, and balsam fir. Okay, this one, real soft, fleshy leaves, grows down in low places. This is northern white cedar. This was the other one that grew in low places. This was the one that was actually a deciduous conifer. It's just growing new needles, but it loses its needles in the wintertime. This is tamarack, a type of larch. And now I've mixed them up. See if you can figure out which ones are which, without any prompting at all. White pine, balsam fir, Scots pine, northern white spruce, tamarack, Colorado blue spruce, white cedar or arborvite, jack pine, red pine. Conifers are the most majestic trees we have in northern Minnesota. Just look at this beautiful big white pine. It's really special to be able to walk through the woods in northern Minnesota and it's even better when you can actually recognize what it is that you're looking at. Join us again on Common Ground. If you have an idea for Common Ground in north central Minnesota, email us at legacy at lptv.org or call 218-333-3014. To watch Common Ground online, visit lptv.org and click Local Shows. For episodes or segments of Common Ground, call 218-333-3020. Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations, member FDIC. Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. If you watch Common Ground online, consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org.