Appalachian tree identification, from the peaks down to the coves

High peaks: Fraser fir and red spruce

On the highest summits, the dark conifer forest is spruce and fir. The USDA Forest Service says Fraser fir grows only at high elevations in southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, as low as 4,500 feet on north slopes but mostly above 5,500 feet, and in nearly pure stands above 6,300 feet; it reaches 6,684 feet on Mount Mitchell. Its upright cones are 1.4 to 2.4 inches long, and the test that separates it from balsam fir is the bracts: strongly bent back and much longer than the cone scales. The fir page compares Fraser fir with the other true firs.

Red spruce comes in lower. According to the Forest Service red spruce account, it grows from about 4,500 feet in the southern Appalachians, mixing with hardwoods and eastern hemlock up to about 5,000 feet; in West Virginia spruce-fir stands start as low as 3,200 feet. Its cones hang down, are 1.3 to 1.5 inches long and light reddish brown, with rigid rounded scales. Hanging cones mean spruce, upright cones mean fir: the spruce vs fir page adds the needle tests.

Many dead gray firs on the peaks are the work of the balsam woolly adelgid, found on Mount Mitchell in 1957. The Forest Service reports mortality rising from 11,000 trees in 1958 to about 1.75 million by 1970.

Moist coves: yellow buckeye, tulip tree and hemlock

Sheltered coves hold the richest hardwood forests in the mountains. Yellow buckeye is one of the trees to learn there. The Forest Service gives yellow or yellowish-white flowers from April to June and a rounded, leathery, three-parted capsule 2 to 3 inches long. In the Great Smoky Mountains it grows from 1,500 to 6,100 feet, most commonly between 4,000 and 5,000 feet. The Forest Service reports that the young shoots and seeds contain a poisonous glucoside harmful to animals: never eat buckeye nuts, and do not confuse them with chestnuts. The chestnut vs buckeye page separates the two by leaf and husk.

Tulip tree, with its four-lobed leaf cut square across the tip, is the tall straight trunk of cove forests; the tulip tree page covers its flowers and seeds. Eastern hemlock lines cool streams, with short flat needles carrying two white lines underneath. The National Park Service lists it as threatened by the hemlock woolly adelgid, an introduced insect. Eastern hophornbeam, one of the trees called ironwood, keeps to north slopes, protected lower slopes, ravines and coves in the Smokies (USDA Forest Service); the ironwood page covers its shreddy bark and hop-like fruit.

Summer flowers and red fall color: sourwood

Sourwood is a small tree of mountain slopes that most hikers notice twice a year. NC State Extension describes glossy leaves 3 to 6 inches long with a sour taste, waxy white bell-shaped flowers in drooping sprays 4 to 8 inches long in June and July, and fall color that is typically crimson red. The dry seed capsules turn silver-gray in September and October and stay on after the leaves drop. The bark is red-brown, with deep furrows between flat ridges. Sourwood grows from Pennsylvania to northern Florida, west to Ohio and Louisiana. The sourwood page covers it through the year.

Dry ridges: chestnut oak and Table Mountain pine

On rocky ridgetops the forest thins to oaks and pines. Chestnut oak is the oak of these ridges. NC State describes oval leaves 4 to 8 inches long, coarsely toothed rather than lobed, gray-green and hairy beneath, and thick dark reddish-brown bark with deep, broad ridges, the thickest of the native oaks. Its acorns are 1 to 1.5 inches long, with a cup covering about a third of the nut.

Table Mountain pine is an Appalachian native of dry, rocky slopes. NC State gives stiff, twisted, yellow-green needles in bundles of two, about 1.5 to 2.5 inches long, and glossy, knobby cones 2.5 to 3 inches long, each scale tipped with a hooked spine, often in clusters of three or four that stay on the branch for years. NC State lists pitch pine and Virginia pine as the trees most often confused with it.

The chestnut that is mostly gone

American chestnut once grew across these ridges, but the National Park Service says it has almost completely disappeared from the Smokies because of chestnut blight. Most chestnuts you find today are planted Chinese chestnuts. The American Chestnut Foundation separates them by the leaf: American chestnut leaves are long and narrow, thin and papery, with large teeth whose bristles curve inward like a breaking wave, a sharply tapered base and hairless twigs; Chinese chestnut leaves are oval, thick and waxy, with a rounded base and hairy twigs and veins.

Using a photo on the trail

Cell service is patchy in the mountains, and Tree Identifier needs an internet connection to identify a photo, so take the pictures on the trail and identify them later from your library. One photo per tree works best: the whole leaf, a cone or the bark. Tulip tree, eastern hemlock and eastern white pine are among the species in the app's Collection, and the Tree Map remembers where a find was located. The app shows no confidence score or list of alternatives, so check its answer against the zone table above.