I’ve spent a few more days exploring the local woodlot (and the local idiot teenagers got themselves arrested, so no more competition from them, I hope. Maybe they’ll get community service and have to clean up their pop cans.). The fall colours rapidly progressed and the trees, especially the cottonwoods, are beginning to look bare. Here are some pictures from a few weeks ago, when I decided to try identifying some tree species (probably mostly failed).
Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina). Look how red they are!
Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) a few weeks ago – they’re now wilted and brown.
The leaves of a couple of small ash trees (Fraxinus - hello, Xylem Up!), which dominate the understory in my little forest. The ashes seemed to fall into two types – one with with narrow leaflets on the left, and one with rounder leaflets, particularly the terminal leaflet, on the right. But I gave upon IDing them to species.
Leaves from three lovely oaks (Quercus). The one in the centre is from a black oak; I think the other two are both bur oaks, though there’s a chance the rightmost one is a white oak.
Anyone know what this tree is? It has some compound and some simple leaves, and the compound ones vary in the number of leaflets while the leaflets may or may not have multiple lobes. Some of the compound leaves look like poison ivy!
Or this one? Possibly a chokecherry?
Your variable leaftlet fella is definitely an Acer… probably the box elder, Acer negundo. The ashes are tough without clues from bark or flowering or sometimes even the crown shape, but you probably have Fraxinus nigra and/or pennsylvanica.
Ah, that would explain where the legion of boxelder bugs invading my yard are coming from. Thanks!