Tree News

A surprising number of deciduous trees maintain some of last year's dead leaves well into late winter and even early spring. I took this picture of a young sugar maple on Feburary 18th of this year. However, it seems that lingering leaves on sugar maples are more the exception rather than the rule. It is very common, on the other hand, to find last year's leaves on young beeches and the lower limbs of white oaks of any age.

A brief period of sunshine with a little rain in the area, and we were rewarded with a rainbow in the backyard October 13. I actually had my camera ready to check out out the foilage. The larger image below includes the sugar maples, butternut, and ash that I was investigating:

The evergreen tree in your yard has lots of brown needles and it's shedding them. Is this cause for concern? Generally speaking, no.

Evergreen trees, including pines, hemlocks, spruces, and firs loose their needles periodically. The white pine (Pinus strobus) pictured here has a typical appearance for a tree shedding its needles.

If you have been seeing a small tree with red fruit that doesn't seem familiar, it may be that you are noticing the hawthorn for the first time. Although I don't know if it's true over a larger area, it seems that the hawthorn is having an exceptional year for producing fruit over parts of central Pennsylvania.