Identifying Trees Using Tree Finder

I have a love/hate relationship with The Green-Wood Tree Finder web app . It's clunky and slow when you run it in a browser on your phone, but it will tell you precisely what kind of tree you are looking at if you can find and read the silver tag posted on the north side of the tree. And that is sweet. Knowing the tree you are looking at is a beautiful thing, and also very useful in identifying fungi.

Jon (@notdog) recently shared a new Tree Finder trick that can help locate good-to-great mushroom sites.

"...I set up a filter [in Tree Finder] to show only red oaks on the map, which led to a bunch of new-to-me fungi...Basically you tap the filter icon at the lower left (looks like a funnel) and type in the tree name in one or more fields. I go to the third field, which is for a common name, type in red oak, and tap apply. If your phone's like mine, you'll then have to tap the minimize icon (like a dash) a dozen times before the filter window disappears. You may then need to zoom in two levels for the trees to appear. You can show your location too by tapping the crosshairs icon, but that will not let you move the map around. I recommend trying this out on a laptop or desktop web browser first to see how it works (minus the crosshairs, which will take you out of Greenwood if you're testing from home). It also has the advantage of not often having to restart the app after you switch to the camera, which happens with some frequency on the phone."

As Jon states, red oaks (Quercus rubra) are very friendly with all sorts of classic charismatic mycorrhizal mushrooms -- boletes, amanitas, and russulas, to name a few. In the fall, eastern white pines (Pinus strobus) and Douglas firs (Pseudotsuga menziesii) are also very productive.

Posted on July 30, 2021 03:33 PM by pcpalmer3