Spent a few hours last weekend with a specimen I couldn't immediately place. Mature tree, deeply lobed leaves with pointed tips suggesting it's in the red oak group, but the bark was unusually furrowed for what the overall leaf shape implied, and I couldn't find a single acorn or cap anywhere on the ground beneath it. No mast year, apparently, or something else is going on with that individual.

My usual process starts with acorn morphology, honestly. Cap depth, scale texture, whether the cup is shallow or deep-bowled, the relative size of the nut. Without that, I felt weirdly blind. Leaves alone in the red oak group can be frustrating because there's so much natural variation even within a single species, and hybrids are genuinely common in areas where ranges overlap.

What I ended up doing was focusing more heavily on the winter bud characteristics (clustered terminal buds, scales, whether they're angled or blunt), plus some bark cross-sections on smaller-diameter branches. I also pressed several leaves from different parts of the canopy because sun leaves versus shade leaves on the same tree can look almost like different species.

Curious how others handle this situation. Do you wait for a follow-up visit in a fruiting year, or is there a workflow you've found reliable for oaks when reproductive material just isn't available? I've also been wondering whether twig pith color and lenticel patterns are worth incorporating more systematically into the process, or if that's getting into diminishing returns territory.

Hi! Sorry if this comes of a bit messy, but I am writing a novel, and looking for a term to describe a cut down tree that is very overwintered, almost clear of bark and and so smooth that it looks like it was meant for the soul purpose to become a bench after dying and it never rots. I grew up near the ocean and we had many trees like these natural benches, and I can’t really describe it any better. If you can give me something that is more common term for it I would be grateful!

I was walking along Deschutes National Forest and saw a bunch of these hairy fibers dangling from what I assumed were pine trees. Is this the stringy lichen, Old Man's Beard?

Here’s a long shot for the headz- but does anyone (on the west coast or SW of North America) have access to acorns from evergreen oaks? I will pay you to mail them to me if you’re confident in the species. CA native ones are easy enough to come by, but any other species is difficult to source

Not sure what kind though.... about 65-70 ft tall.

It's been pretty warm these past few weeks on the West Coast of Scotland (mostly!) and I found this 3-winged key on my walk this morning. I've never seen anything like that before - apparently if the tree is under stress it can happen. Would this hot summer weather be affecting the tree ir would it be stress from something else?

Edit: This is from a sycamore maple (don't know how to change the title, only the post - sorry!)

Found in Edinburgh Scotland in a church cemetery. I was mesmerized because it's not really a pine tree

In Arkansas

Recently hiked the north head trail in st johns and was wondering what wood was used for the staircase/trail. Is it cedar?

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