A very noticeable fall equinox feature in these parts is when deciduous tree leaves turn from green to yellow or orange or sometimes red, then fade and waft to the ground. Middle Alaska doesn’t have many species of deciduous trees: paper birch, aspen, willows and balsam poplar are all part of the dominant boreal forest here.
Columbus Dispatch: Birch trees can make a beautiful addition to your landscape this season
Few shade trees are as distinctive in the home landscape as birch trees. Their unique bark characteristics, distinctive growth form and graceful delicate foliage are reason alone to feature one or ...
Birch trees can make a beautiful addition to your landscape this season
Interior Alaskan forests have only six native tree species: white spruce, black spruce, quaking aspen, balsam poplar, larch (tamarack) and paper birch. Northern Canadian forests have all of those, plus jack pine, balsam fir and lodgepole pine. Since northern Canada and interior Alaska share the same grueling climate and extremes of daylength, why are the Canadian tree species absent from ...
A tree's age can be easily determined by counting its growth rings, as any Boy or Girl Scout knows. Annually, the tree adds new layers of wood which thicken during the growing season and thin during the winter. These annual growth rings are easily discernible (and countable) in cross-sections of the tree's trunk. In good growing years, when sunlight and rainfall are plentiful, the growth rings ...
Burls, spherical woody growths on the trunks of spruce, birch and other trees, are commonly found throughout wooded parts of Alaska.
In interior Alaska and some parts of Canada, witches' broom (an abnormal outgrowth of branches of the tree resembling the sweeping end of a broom), is commonly seen on black and white spruce trees. From late fall through the winter, the brooms are dark brown or "dead"looking and are often mistaken for birds' and squirrels' nests.