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Deciduous or Evergreen?

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Most deciduous trees have broad leaves and hard wood.

Most evergreen trees are conifers

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Cool Conifer Facts��Been here for 300 million years!��Year-round food production��Triangular shape��Thick, waxy leaves withstand heat��Supercooling in very cold temperatures��

Evergreen Conifers are Resilient!

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Trees make their own medicine in the form of pitch to cover wounds, fight infection and promote healing.

Pitch is a band aid and an antibiotic ointment all in one!

People use pitch on their skin to heal wounds.

Medicine Makers

Medicine Makers: Trees have to get everything they need while staying in one place. If they get injured, they can’t go to the doctor like we can. When a tree is injured, it makes its own medicine and band aid. What part of the tree am I referring to? Tree pitch or resin is full of medicine that wards off diseases and repels animals that might attack it. If a tree is injured, it covers the wound with pitch. This is like our blood forming a scab. Over time, the tree usually heals.

People have used pitch for thousands of years to heal wounds. If you get a cut, scrape or insect bite, you can dab a little sap on it to speed the healing process. Put a little soft leaf or a band-aid on top so the sap stays on your wound and does not rub off on your clothes. Pitch is also used for waterproofing and for starting fires.

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Community Builders

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Some leaves are scale-like

and overlap like lizard skin

Some leaves are needle-like

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Pine Trees have needles in bundles.

The length of the needle and the number per cluster helps you identify the type of pine.

Left: Ponderosa pine (3 per cluster)

Right: Shore pine (2 per cluster)

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Cones come in many shapes and sizes

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Some cones point upward like true firs, while others like hemlock and Douglas fir hang down.

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Soft with long fibers

Deeply grooved

Grey color

Blisters with pitch

Plates or “potato chips

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Western Red Cedar

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Skagit Longhouse 1902

Salish woman on Seattle waterfront, 1898

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Cedar tree with peeled bark

Salish baskets and hat by Suquamish weaver Ed Carrier

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Cooking in a cedar �bent wood box�Skokomish Master Carver Pete Peterson

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Douglas Fir

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Douglas fir tips are called “Nature’s Gatorade” because they are high in Vitamin C and electrolytes

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Mice got stuck in Douglas fir cones

Douglas fir squirrel’s favorite meal

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Western Hemlock

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Hemlock bark is grey colored. The limey green spring shoots can be eaten or prepared as tea. Hemlock is the Washington State tree.

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Grand Fir

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Young bark has resin blisters. Older bark becomes furrowed.

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Sitka Spruce

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Leaves are sharp!

Bark comes off in plates like potato chips

Cones feel papery

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Spruce leaves are dried and made into tea. The pitch is used as medicine.

Long roots are woven into baskets.

The wood is made into musical instruments

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Western Yew

SAFETY FIRST!

CAUTION: Yew berries, bark, and branches are toxic and should not be eaten or drunk as tea. Only experienced gatherers should harvest the bark.

Yew is a shrubby little evergreen tree growing up to 50 feet tall in the understory of deep forests. The bark is shaggy, comes off in strips, and is often several colors including gray, brown, and orange. Deep green needles grow horizontally in two opposite rows. The female seed resembles red huckleberry in shape, color, and size. Birds and other animals relish them.

Native Americans have sustainably harvested and used yew for medicine for many generations. In the 1990s, scientists discovered that yew contains a powerful compound called Taxol, which can inhibit the growth of breast and ovarian cancer cells. Drug companies bought and claimed the rights to all the yew trees in national forests and used them to create cancer drugs. People from Warm Springs were actually jailed for harvesting yew in their traditional territory. By the year 2000, pharmaceutical companies discovered how to synthesize the drug—releasing pressure off this powerful little tree. It will take decades for yew trees to return to their former population.

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How can you care for trees?

Actions to Take:

Reuse wood products
Recycle paper
Plant trees
Remove invasive species
Get involved with citizen science and restoration projects
Form friendships with trees!

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Additional Optional Slide for �Tree Identification Activity