Tree Identification 101 -Mantis Outdoors

Description

In this video id like to show the beginner how to get out there and start identifying trees. This is a basic tutorial on how to use a field guide to identify plants and trees i wanted to keep it simple in this video not to over load the new student

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Video Transcription

hey how you guys doing my name is William Myers from its outdoors and I get a lot of questions about tree identification plant identification and on this video we're going to cut straight on tree identification we're not going to go through a bunch of trees i'm just going to teach you a method that you can take out on your own and go into your personal space in your woods and start to identify trees on your own and you know that's something that I value is you know when I was first starting this out was my time in the woods by myself using this method I'm going to teach you to to identify trees on my own you know and a lot of people say you know don't go harvesting plants and don't go identifying plants on your own don't go consuming things on your own go out there all the time on a daily basis I used to you know when I was when I was learning to identify plants and to use plants I used to go out on a daily basis oh that's that point you know just walking through the trail oh that's that plan I look that's that tree yeah you know and that just reaffirms that in your mind but what we're going to talk about today is how to go and identify trees with field guides basically how to use field guides you know and this it's not like a no-brainer it's pretty easy but a lot of people they'll pick up a field guide like Peterson's or something like that and they don't really know how to use that book to its full advantage so we're going to go through what it takes to identify trees just by using a field guide and the steps that you have to know before you pick up one of these guys alright so when you're out there and you're interested in I gotta find trees and plants for that matter there are some basic plant knowledge that you need to know and sometimes it gets a little overwhelming because you know a lot of videos that i see they just throw all that out at once and it can get a little like i said overwhelming but we'll just start out with some simple stuff like opposite and alternating and what i mean by that is the leaves if if you look at this these leaves are opposite now if the leaf pattern was like this that would be alternating and the others like I said there's all kind of like whirls you know all kinds of stuff but let's just start out with that opposite and alternating this is just you know a basic tutorial and this is going to help you use field guides as well and what we're going to say i want to show you here in a minute but leaf shape you know there's tooth lobed you know all kinds of others right now we're just going to go with like tooth and lobed so just keep that in your mind so alternating and opposite leaf-shaped lobed or tooth so this is kind of what I'm talking about how that's going to play a role in what we're going to do you can see that this book is set up just like pretty much every other field guide to identifying plants and trees and so on and so on it starts out with how the leaves are set on the branches or as in plants how the leaves are set on the plant I don't think anything else okay so obviously it's pretty obvious if you have needles you know if you have trees that have scaly needles you know those like your hemlocks and things like that but this is what we're talking about here simply oppositely attached leaves simply alternatingly attached leaves you know then you can go with trees that have lobed obviously attached trees that have loves ultimately attached did you see that that theme that's coming down no matter what the leaf shape is is it simply oppositely attached or is it alternatively attached opposite alternately all throughout here that is going to make identifying the tree that you're in front of a lot easier using this book so when you are coming to a tree that you don't know and you're wanting to use a field guide this is a pretty good field guide I've used these a lot in the past it is by Stan can't say his last name but tequila Jay yeah this is that I didn't want to say to kilo but trees of Ohio and I'm in Ohio so I've used this blue can't talk I've used this book a lot in the past so it's a really good book you if you're interested and you live in this area has lots of other books that are in other areas as well so go ahead and pick it up but like I said so if you're in front of a tree that you want to identify and obviously it's time of year the leaves are on the tree you can look and say okay the leaves on the tree are on their oppositely or their alternately on there then you can go further are the leaves globes are the leaves tooth are you know so on so on and so on so let's get Megan which she has absolutely no idea how to identify trees get her over here to a tree and see if she can use the field guide to identify the tree alright so now we're at a tree and obviously I know what this tree is that she doesn't I know that she doesn't and we're she's going to try to look up the tree in the book using the method that they have for identifying trees so first off what you can look at is is our leaves on here are the opposite or the alternating alternating how do you know that cuz there's one there and then there than there are there they're not out of a zigzag they're not across from each other like this alright so now look at the very first page of the book and it'll show you leaves that are opposite okay okay alright so those are leaves that are are my love right compound simple yep simple leaves okay these are simple leaves how do you know the difference between simple and low opening compound while these leaves load I meant like a are their hopes like an oak and oak has lobes I like you know what an oak tree leaves look like I know you know that we've been our a corn harvesting before yeah so these are simple leave so simple leaves that are alternating where does that start out at page for you sir so go to page 47 that's the start of that Matt cut alright so now making us found the page where all turning leaves start and what she's gonna look for soon look for a heavily tooth leaf that matches this and she's gonna start looking at the bark as well because they show pictures of the bar and she just gonna start flipping through until she finds something that she thinks is accurate and you know at this part it is kind of I think that this is an elm tree but I'm just trying to figure out look at the bark

see that's where you think it's an elm tree because of the leaf shape but then you look at the bark and something's not right it's not making sense so you just keep scanning unfortunately for her there's a lot of trees out here with alternating simple leave so she's got a lot of a lot of scanning to do but this is that this is the property what is this tree yeah this is basically the process this is how you learn how to identify trees this is how you start you know and you might get it wrong and then take pictures and then you send it to somebody that you know knows about treason or say no that's that's not what it is but it is this so then the next time you go in the woods you're going to see that and say well I thought that was an elm but it's actually uh I can't say right now but going backwards I mean I think it's an um tree I could just die right now you're not right style keep looking

all right we're gonna cut the video right now because if you should probably take the 10 15 minutes to actually get to where I think she needs to be and when she gets there and she starts getting on the right track will come back do-do-do-do-do-do-do all right she thinks she's got it but I want her to explain why she thinks she's got it ok so the bark and that picture lots of different little nuts and spots and that what it's got going on here and then the leaves are shaped you know pretty much the same see this is a good time for you to be out here trying this too because obviously the pitchers in that book one thing for sure I like full-color pictures these drawing black-and-white drawings sketches don't if you see a book like that I would skip it try to get a book a field guy that has full color scale HD pictures in it but I like to challenge well especially myself I like to challenge myself within different times a year when the the pictures aren't going one hundred percent match up to the leaves that are it also says in the book fall color so yellow to brown and that's pretty much right between the two so all right we'll tell people what the tree isn't American beech tree so if you guys are longtime prepared my 101 viewers you'll never remember this tree yeah Chris I misidentified its okays these words are so similar I said the wrong words he thought it was a bird free i thought i was a virgin but yeah this is an american beach and you can tell that because when you look down at the bottom of the tree you can see that scaly bark that almost looks like maybe like an ash Park or something like that and then it smooths once it grows and this is the tree is one of the trees that can grow really straight really tall the wood is really useful the nuts beechnuts I mean come on guys you know this is a really good tree to know it can also be used for sap you know things like that so this was just kind of a a 101 lesson on how to use field guides to to identify trees out here and that's what I encourage on my channel I encourage you guys to get out there start knowing what's around your environment you know when people they go out they just see green when you start identifying plants you start identifying trees you don't see green anymore when I walk through the woods I see beach x e walnut I see birds around here yeah yellow birch or what people call river birch stuff like that yeah that's around it's not it's not as cool as paper birch but hey yeah we don't have paper paper birch unless it was planted you know in somebody's yard we don't we really don't have big brother wiki or they've got those trees everywhere it's like no let's start a fire nine time yeah they're usually I'd like up in the boreal forest or something like that yeah in my Jamie burly's area he's got tons and tons of tons of paper birch it's just crazy yeah you grew up hearing it start a fire with that yeah you can't start fire perché just get out of the woods but yeah so I like I'm saying that's what I encourage people to do you know I encourage people to pick up these books get with your local experts you know and and sometimes people that can intimidate people all a local expert I don't know where to find what I know how to find one if you pick up one of these books that's a start you know you can start going out and identifying and knowing what's in your area and then like I said your world opens up you're not just seeing green and brown anymore you're seeing what things are for what they aren't and then you start learning how to use those things but hello boy put your arms in air like you're hanging yeah scary out of the truth come on man it's a cool all right guys what's been we Meyers me south doors I hope you enjoyed this video if you did there's some more of my previous videos that are playing in the screens to my left right now there's also a subscribe button over there if you haven't done so i'll appreciate if you subscribe to the channel to stay up to date with what I'm doing with my school and the youtube channel stay posted on the videos that are going to be uploaded you can go to WWF a spook calm for / manis outdoors or you can go to ww mas outdoors LLC com like in my videos helps me and my channel out a lot I appreciate our reviews comments and support and hopefully we'll see out the woods