New England tree identification, north to south

First check: opposite or alternate branches

UNH Extension's identification tips start from a distance and with the branches: "Most native New Hampshire trees are alternately branched." The few with opposite branches and buds follow the memory word MADHORSE: maple, ash, dogwood and horse chestnut, the last one not native. Because branches grow from buds, the buds show the same pattern, which makes this test work in winter too.

So if the twigs come off in pairs, you are almost certainly looking at a maple, an ash or a dogwood. Lobed leaves mean maple; compound leaves with five or more leaflets mean ash; smooth-edged leaves with veins curving toward the tip mean dogwood. Everything else, from birches to oaks to cherries, is alternate. The winter tree identification guide continues with buds and bark when the leaves are down.

The northern forest: Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont

In the north and in the mountains, conifers mix with birch, maple and beech.

• Red spruce (Picea rubens): single needles that can be rolled between the fingers, without a stalk, on twigs with fine hairs and no waxy bloom; cones longer than wide, with woody scales. Go Botany says it grows best in cool, moist climates, at higher elevations and in cold pockets, and is absent from Rhode Island (Native Plant Trust). Black spruce has dull needles with a bloom and some gland-tipped twig hairs; white spruce has hairless twigs.
• Balsam fir (Abies balsamea): flat needles that will not roll, no stalk, small resin blisters on the bark and cones that stand upright on the branches (Native Plant Trust). The spruce vs fir guide covers the general difference.
• Yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis): shiny golden to silvery bark that peels off easily or hangs from the trunk, and young twigs that smell of wintergreen when scratched, a trait black (sweet) birch shares. Go Botany places it nearly throughout the region in forests and swamps (Native Plant Trust).
• Paper birch (Betula papyrifera): very white bark peeling readily, with black V-shaped marks where branches join and oval, double-toothed leaves 2 to 4 in (Morton Arboretum). New Hampshire's list also includes gray birch and heart-leaved paper birch; the birch guide separates the white-barked ones.
• Sugar maple (Acer saccharum): five-lobed leaves 3 to 6 in, gray-brown furrowed bark, paired winged seeds about 1 in long; yellow to burnt-orange fall color (Morton Arboretum).
• American beech (Fagus grandifolia): thin, exceptionally smooth light-gray bark; long, narrow buds 8 to 19 mm (1/3 to 3/4 in) with shingled scales; toothed leaves 60 to 120 mm (2 1/2 to 4 3/4 in) long that turn golden-brown and often hang on into winter; small nuts in a spiny husk. Go Botany notes a Nectria fungus that blisters the bark of mature trees (Native Plant Trust).
• Striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum), also called moosewood: a small understory tree with vertical white stripes on greenish-brown bark and broad, three-pointed leaves (Native Plant Trust).

Never eat a berry, nut, seed or pod on the strength of a web page or an app; check with a local expert.

Southern New England: Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island

South of the mountains, and up the larger river valleys, the woods turn to oak, hickory, pine and hemlock.

• Eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis): flat needles about 1/2 in (10 to 20 mm) long, mostly in two rows, each with a tiny stalk and two white lines of stomata underneath; ovoid light-brown cones about 3/4 in; a drooping top shoot. Broken bark shows purple streaks (Virginia Tech Dendrology). Go Botany records it in all six states and notes it is "increasingly under threat from the hemlock woolly adelgid" (Native Plant Trust).
• Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus): soft needles 3 to 6 in in bundles of five, slender cones up to 8 in with white resin tips, and dark gray-brown, deeply furrowed bark on old trees (Morton Arboretum). New England's other common pines, red and pitch pine, both appear on New Hampshire's native list; the red pine vs white pine page separates the first two.
• Oaks: northern red, white, black, scarlet and swamp white oak all appear on UNH's list. The red oak vs white oak page sorts any oak into its group by the lobes and acorns.
• Hickories: shagbark, pignut and bitternut. Shagbark is the easy one, with gray bark that peels in long, flat plates curving out at the ends and leaves of five to seven leaflets (Morton Arboretum).
• Red maple (Acer rubrum): leaves with three main lobes in opposite pairs, bright red buds in late winter, and small red flower clusters before the leaves open in spring. UNH lists it as native; the red maple vs sugar maple page tells the two apart.

Two conifers mark wet and sandy ground near the coast: Atlantic white-cedar in swamps and pitch pine on sandy soils, both on UNH's native list.

Free New England tree guides

Checked on October 21, 2026:

• Go Botany, from the Native Plant Trust in Framingham, Massachusetts. A free website covering more than 3,000 New England plants, with a Simple Key for over 1,200 common native and naturalized species and a species page for each tree with state-by-state presence.
• Forest Trees of Maine, Maine Forest Service. First published in 1908; the Centennial Edition of 2008 is free to download, and Digital Maine lists it as having no US copyright.
• List of New Hampshire Native Trees, UNH Extension. A free list of 86 species with Latin names, split into softwoods and hardwoods. The Extension's publications page also recommends Elbert Little's Audubon field guide to eastern trees and Petrides' A Field Guide to Eastern Trees.

Leaf-peeping season is the easiest time to start: the trees with red leaves in fall guide names the maples, oaks and others behind the colors.

In the woods, a photo can give a quick first answer: Tree Identifier names a tree from one picture of a needle spray, a leaf, the bark or a cone, and its follow-up chat can answer a question such as "is this red spruce or balsam fir?". It shows no confidence score, so check the result against the feature in the table above. The app's Collection includes eastern hemlock, eastern white pine, sugar maple, red maple, paper birch and American beech, and its Tree Map keeps each find you locate.