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Tree Identification: Alabama

According to the Alabama Forestry Commission, 69% of Alabama's 32.6 million acres is forested land. That amounts to approximately 22 million acres of forests in Alabama.

These forests are an important natural resource to our state. Alabama's forests make a substantial and essential contribution to both the economic and environmental well-being of her citizens.

Forest Diversity

There are trees that are said to be common to Alabama forests. However, if you were to walk into a wooded area today, you may not find every type of tree in the area where you are walking.

Alabama's forests are very diverse in composition of plant species for a variety of reasons.

  • Forest types, natural factors, landscape diversity, and forest composition occurs as a result of human activity, both historical and recent.
  • Land ownership and development objectives determine the extent of land or forest manipulation in terms of appearance, age, size, and shape.
  • The adaptability of each tree species. Some species can survive and thrive under a wide variety of site conditions, while other species are very restrictive in their growing requirements.

Tree Identification

Once you have determined the various types of trees in a region how do you go about identifying those trees?

The professionals from the Natural Resources Conservation Service say that, “a tree will be recognized by its fruit” is a truth. The method used to classify tree species taxonomically. Taxonomy is the scientific classification of organisms into groups.

The problem is that the fruit is not always present on a tree. Therefore, we must look for other identifying characteristics that distinguish tree species.

Leaves can be a reliable substitute for fruit as a characteristic to use for identifying a tree. Leaves can be grouped according to their shape and structure. By selecting the proper leaf group, you can find your tree species more rapidly. You learned about leaves and the characteristics in the last lesson.

Tree Collection

As stated in the lesson introduction, you are going to create a tree collection for your task in this lesson. You will be identifying trees that are commonly found in Alabama.

Common Trees of Alabama

What are the trees commonly found in Alabama? Alabama County Extension has created a document to aid in determining the 60 most common trees in Alabama. It is important that these trees are not only used for commercial purposes, but also for landscape and wildlife improvements as well. You can find pages 9-16 of A Key to Common Native Trees in the resources area to the right.

Tree Images

Where can I find images of these trees? There are several resources on the web that you can use. It is best, however, to pick a reputable resource to ensure that the images you are collecting are actually images of your desired tree. It is best to avoid search engines. Using a reputable source for tree identification is critical.

A great choice is Forestry Images.

Tree Identification in the Wild

What can I do if I have a tree species in the wild that I want to identify? There are several resources that can be used to aid in identification of a tree, including:

Use the questions on page 3 of the Common Trees in Alabama guide when inspecting a leaf or needle of an unknown tree. This resource will move you through a series of questions that help you determine the type of tree you have In addition, there are field guides on the market that also aid in the identification of trees using this same key or system called the dichotomous key system. Both the digital and field guide work the same but are in different formats. It may be found that the field guide works best in rural parts of Alabama.