How Do You Identify Evergreen Trees In Wisconsin?
From the fragrant white pine to the soaring Douglas fir, Wisconsin is home to more than a dozen varieties of evergreen trees. One of the distinctive traits of evergreens is that they shed their leaves, or needles, throughout the year, while deciduous trees drop all their leaves at one time. Once you’ve established that a tree is indeed an evergreen, you can determine the basic differences that identify evergreens like spruce, fir and pine, hemlock and tamarack. Take a walk in Wisconsin’s late fall, after deciduous trees have dropped their leaves. It’s easier to pick out evergreens because they’ll still be colorful against the bare branches of other trees. Test the foliage with your fingers. If the tree has needles that are short, narrow and sharp, it’s probably a spruce. The needles of a white pine are much softer, more flexible and can be as long as 10 inches. Fir trees have flat needles with blunt ends. Hemlock trees have short, soft needles. Wisconsin has plenty of all four. Look fo
