Observe: Trees, Trees, and  More Trees!

Most trees are either coniferous or deciduous.

Few places are better to spend a warm summer afternoon than Devonian Gardens, near Devon, Alberta.

The garden was established in 1959 by the University of Alberta, and contains an amazing collection of plants from Alberta and around the world.

The photo shows the Kurimoto Japanese Garden, which is a special display garden at the Devonian.  You can see clearly that some of the trees are losing their leaves while other trees keep their green needles.  This is an important difference between the two major tree types.  Coniferous trees bear cones, and most have needle-like leaves that remain green year-round (evergreen).  Deciduous trees have flat leaves, which fall off seasonally.

When you visit the Devonian Gardens, you may notice other plants as well.  However, trees differ from other plants in the following ways.

• Other plants are shorter than trees.
• No plant with a soft, green, juicy stem is a tree. 
• Shrubs, like trees, have woody stems; but most shrubs have more than one stem. Shrub stems do not grow to be as thick as a trunk.
• Although some jungle vines have a woody stem, they do not act as a trunk and cannot support the vine.
  

  Skill Builder

---

Click a link below to learn how to:

construct a Venn Diagram in Google Docs