The Wild

As I have been working my way through the different local trees in an attempt to improve my identification skills, the question of tree identification tools has occurred to me. I know that there are many field guilds, and that they are produced for everything from birds to mushrooms. Indeed, when working in remote wilderness settings a good old paper reference guide would be a good investment.

Not being in the field however, I thought that there must be some sort of online resources. I expected that most, if not all such applications would be centred around the US growing zones due to market share. I was nicely surprised to find that the Government of Canada showed up right away in a search for “Canadian tree identification app.”

The application is called “My Tree” and although it is a tool for determining the best tree to plant in your location, the descriptions suggests that it may also be of use in identification.

My Tree

According to the website: “You can customize your search results by location, tree type (coniferous or deciduous), soil moisture, light requirements and/or autumn leaf colour. You can even include a preference for native or introduced species.”

At time of writing I have not yet tried the application, but I will download it and try it out once the weather is a little nicer and I am able to spend more time outdoors. A great learning activity might be to look for the native species in my areas according to the application. The Government of Canada also provides an online tool here.

Another useful site that came up in my search is called Tree Bee. This site features a really nice search tool, and is packed with useful information and pictures. It also offers an account based service which allows you geographically track trees that you have ID’d. This could probably be combined with the Government of Canada application to create a program of search and identify, where a person could not only learn identification, but then share the location of specific trees for others to learn from.

Pending spring weather, I will give both of these offerings a try and see how well they work. If I am able to find examples of the trees locally, I might begin to add this information to my posts.