Winter Trees

Carole Gerber and Leslie Evans

Winter Trees Carole Gerber Illustrated by Leslie Evans Crunch! We walk through fresh new snow that sparkles on the frozen ground. It’s peaceful here among the trees— our footsteps make the only sound. Trees that once had leaves are bare. They’re dressed instead in lacy white. Snow dusts their trunks and coats their limbs with flakes that outline them with light. They stand distinct as skeletons. We clearly see the form of each: the egg shape of the maple tree; the taller oval of the beech . . . The V formation of the birch; the yellow poplar, wide and high; the spreading structure of the oak, its branches reaching toward the sky. The sugar maple’s bark is gray. Its twigs are brown. Its buds are stout, with clawlike tips that in the spring will burst to shoot new green leaves out. The beech tree called American has bark that’s smooth and silver-gray. Tan leaves still cling to limbs and branches on this cold, bright winter day. The peeling bark of paper birch feeds hungry hares that eat their fill. Inside the trunk, a narrow nest protects a bird from winter’s chill. Tall yellow poplar’s furrowed bark surrounds a trunk that’s straight and neat. Its reddish twigs hold puffy buds— for deer, a tasty winter treat. See bur oak’s ridged, enormous trunk, its massive limbs that intertwine, its tangled twigs that twist and point— a strange, bewitching tree to find! The evergreens don’t change their look. We see their needles all year round. But older needles near the trunk drop off and fall onto the ground. Eastern hemlock’s sloping branches droop with tiny twigs and cones. The hemlock lives for centuries. Look how huge this tree has grown! White spruce looks like a pyramid. Cones hang from branches near the crown. Don’t touch its needles—ouch! They’re sharp. Its scaly bark is grayish brown.