CHAPTER III. 
HOW TO IDENTIFY SHADE TREES 
H OW many trees do you know well enough to call by 
name at sight? Can you tell an Oak from a Beech, 
a Red Oak from a White Oak or a Norway Maple from a 
Sugar Maple? Do you know the difference between the 
Buckeye and the Horse Chestnut? 
The man who loves trees should be able to identify 
them at a glance. This does not mean that he should 
turn botanist and spend his life in the pursuit of such 
terms as “staminal differentiation” or “pinnately com¬ 
pound,” or that he must study the trees of Borneo or 
Madagascar. It does not call for scholarly research into 
the many-syllabled Latin names employed by the scien¬ 
tists. Plat anus Occidentalis is all right for the expert, but 
for the plain citizen the simple name of Sycamore meets 
every demand. The one thing that is suggested is that he 
should make himself familiar with the trees most commonly 
found in his own section of the country and that he 
learn to know them by the names in everyday use. 
A little study along this line may save one from em¬ 
barrassing moments when somebody asks the name of a 
particular tree in city park or by country roadside. 
Take the Oaks, for instance. The average man is not 
concerned with the distinction between Quercus palustris 
and Quercus velutina . What he wants to know is how to 
tell the Pin Oak from the Black Oak. He would like 
to be able to distinguish an Oak from the other trees and 
the different species of Oaks from one another. 
As a group the Oaks carry general marks of distinction 
from other trees. One of these marks is the bearing of 
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