Eastern Hemlock [Plant ID Guide]

Description

Krik of Black Owl Outdoors identifies and explains some of the characteristics of Tsuga canadensis, or the Eastern Hemlock.

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Tags: black owl outdoors,nature,camping,hiking,backpacking,survival,bushcraft,wilderness,forest,eastern hemlock,Tsuga canadensis,Backpacking (wilderness),plant ID guide,tree ID guide

Video Transcription

so if turtles Creek here with black outdoors and today I wanted to do a video sort of profiling and give some general information about my favorite tree in the whole wide world and that's the eastern hemlock its Latin name being sugar candy dentists and it's not to be confused with the poison hemlock the poison hemlock you may be familiar with that it was made sort of infamous in history socrates drank the poison hemlock that's not that plant that's a flowering plant angiosperm i'm talking about the eastern hemlock the conifer tree which is gymnosperm which it means it has cones and actually the hemlock has female and male cones on the same tree meaning it can fertilize with itself one tree and then dropped fertilized seeds and then seedlings can come up and they're really small they're about two centimeters I have one in my hand right here that's I found on the ground that's opened up you can tell the Brax have opened and they're really small and just you know really cute you know the reason why I like these hemlock so much is the sort of habitat in the forest there if they're found in and they sort of create this no specific habitat and dense stands of them that were the moss likens the epiphytes are able to grow because they hemlocks have branches sort of swooping and think that keep the snow off the ground in the winter and the animal is really important for a wildlife in the winter it's sort of often offers a sanctuary and that's why I'm sort of gravitated towards them in the winter of the Eastern woodlands where all the deciduous trees drop their leaves the force turns really kind of dreary and brown overcast days and sort of really depressing landscape if you're if you're seeing it all the time but the sort of hemlock stands off for green year-round which is really cool why I like it and another characteristic about the hemlock that I can sort of tell from a distance if I'm gonna try to ID it or find out what try to what kind of tree it is from a distance as opposed to the pines that are found in this area is the really short needles or leaves which are about one and a half two and a half centimetres long as opposed to a pine needle which might be you know eight centimeters just from a distance I can see look up in the crown see the foliage and I can tell if it's a short needle or a long needle which is you know and if I see that I'll maybe be more gravitated to go find check out that habitat I'm gonna actually show you a leaf right now there's another characteristic on the leaves that you can tell it's a hemlock that a lot of you know it's another big characteristic there's white bands on the belly of the leaves you can see there's sort of white bands to cardstone model bands it's the stomata and leaf which is part of the leaf that aids and allows for gas exchange which is really cool but there's white see how fine I try getting out a little branch see if it looks any better on these you can see the white in it it's another characteristic if you're looking for if you're looking for signs of what type of tree it is if you're unsure you can also look at the bark for me personally I think barks really hard indicator to look at step over this tree this bark is sort of gray brownish gray with these longitudinal shallow furrows and my fingers tracing these sort of cavities how they're running in the tree call that furrow and these are pretty shallow as sort of conifers can go you can have Pines that have you know could be inches thick how deep the furrows would go in the in the bark of old-growth which is really cool but and the bark actually was used on hemlock for a long time and that when the leather industry was sort of blooming in in the states there was tannin found in the hemlock bark which is used to help tan hide in leather but now the hemlock is basically used for sort of the pulp in making in paper and just general soy construction lumber there's actually there's there's a smaller hemlock over here you get another look at the bark this one's lit up in the Sun might be a help you see cases you can see because it's a younger tree start out the really look for that defining characteristics but you can see the sort of the form of these furrows as opposed if there was a solid sort of smooth bark all over the tree kind of a side note since I'm talking about the eastern hemlock there's an invasive insect that was thought were brought from Japan it's called the hemlock woolly adelgid and that's been sort of decimating hemlock stands up not only that the eastern hemlock which I'm talking about which we're looking at here but also the Carolina halt hemlock which is I think suka Carolinian has this Latin name but they're really sort of decimating stands in the southeast and they really can't get out that the adelgid can't get a foothold in the north here because of the coder and longer winters but in the South they're really sort of wreaking havoc and you know it's really sad but they're kind of a cool cool insect if you like you know inside and bugs what not these have these little mouth parts that they go into and they attach sort on the ends of the branches towards the the needle bases and they they suck their SAP suckers and they I think they think it's the phloem they're feeding or I could be wrong and you know it's kind of it's kind of a shame that you know people have you know effects on the environment the planet and some of them are very lasting this is a quick talking about my tree famous or my favorite Eastern hemlock later Turtles