A short list of names covers most of the conifer tree examples anyone asks about in North America. Start with eastern white pine, ponderosa pine, Fraser fir and Colorado blue spruce. Add Douglas-fir, eastern hemlock and eastern larch, and you have the roster the standard species guides work from. Coast redwood and giant sequoia belong to the same group, at the enormous end of it. Every one of them holds its seeds in cones and wears needles or scales instead of broad flat leaves.
"Those are all firs, right?" my neighbor asked over the fence, pointing at the row behind my yard. Only one of them was. The seller told me the same thing when I bought the place. The big one is a Douglas-fir, and a Douglas-fir is not a true fir, which is why the hyphen sits in the middle of the name. Everyone on the street calls the stubby tree four spots down an eastern redcedar, and it is a juniper. Her gate tree is arborvitae, a Thuja rather than a cedar. My kitchen window looks straight down that row, and I still reach for the wrong name about half the time.
Common names will mislead you, so sort these trees by what your hands can check. Pines hold their needles in bundles inside a papery sheath, usually two to five needles to a bundle, and you get five soft ones on eastern white pine. Spruces and firs push out single needles straight off the twig, which is where you file Colorado blue spruce and Fraser fir. On junipers and arborvitae you find flat, scale-like leaves pressed tight to the stem. Larch breaks the rule you were taught. Every needle drops in fall, gold first, and you stare at a bare conifer all winter.
Two more names belong on any starter list. White spruce and red fir both turn up in the standard species roundups, and you file them with the single-needle group. You tug one needle off the twig instead of a bundle, and you have narrowed the tree to the single-needle group that holds spruce, fir and hemlock. That one check will settle more trees for you than any photo ever will.
The record holders live out west, so you have to travel to see them. Coast redwood climbs to 367 feet (112 m) and spreads 22 feet (7 m) across at the base, by National Park Service measurements. The General Sherman Tree, a giant sequoia, is the largest tree on earth by volume. Longleaf pine stays far shorter, and it wins on a different count. You can lay a tape along one of its needles and read 18 inches (46 cm), long enough to hang off the branch like green hair.
Skip the world list and start with your own county, because the conifer tree examples that matter are the ones you can walk up to and touch. The USDA Forest Service documents 63 conifer species for North America, and the ones that grow where you live are a short slice of that list. Half of these names hand you the answer. Eastern larch and eastern hemlock say where they live, and you can guess which side of the map ponderosa pine holds. Walk one local park and check two things on every evergreen you pass. Are the needles bundled or single, and are they needles at all or scales? Give it two visits and you will have a name for most of the trees on that path.
Read the full article: Conifers: Types, Traits, and Hard Numbers
