Vocabulary
- Deciduous – trees or shrubs that shed their leaves seasonally or at a certain stage of development.
- Conifer – mostly evergreen trees and shrubs having needle-shaped or scale-like leaves (that are not shed annually) and cones. Examples include pines, which bear true cones, and others such as yews, that do not have cones, but rather contain their seeds in a red, fleshy, berry-like structure known as an aril.
- Climax forest – A plant community dominated by trees representing the culminating stage of natural succession for that specific locality and environment.
Fun Facts
- Pachaug State Forest is Connecticut’s largest state forest, with more than 27,000 acres.
- You can distinguish a red maple tree from a sugar maple tree based on leaf shape – u shape between leaf lobes on sugar maple (“u” for sugar).
- Spotted wintergreen plants are in the wintergreen family, but do not have spots or taste like wintergreen.
