On a walk without leaves you learn trees by their bark, and it turns out that is easier than the leaf books make it seem.

  • Birch everybody knows. But the paper birch and the downy birch peel differently; downy stays more matte, with dark horizontal dashes.
  • Aspen is smooth and greenish-grey, with diamond-shaped scars where old branches were. It looks like it has been polished.
  • Larch is thick, deeply fissured, reddish-brown in the cracks. Older trees look like dried mud.
  • Rowan is smooth, grey, with long lenticels like stretched commas.
  • Alder near water: dark, almost purple-grey, with little cones still hanging from last year.

The trick is to touch it. Bark that photographs the same often feels completely different.

Thanks for spending a moment here.
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