Revisit Tree with Vines

I started my Saturday walk at 7:30 AM with the temperature at 21 degrees. A little bit of sun was showing through the clouds to the east. The were some flurries. Before I went I brushed a little bit of snow off the car windshield for my wife.

Followed the normal trail across the creek I saw a hop hornbeam growing out of the root base of Northern Red oak I took a photo of that.



The bud scales are not finely grooved. they are rounded. This threw me off because that is what a hop hornbeam should have. Hop hornbeam has false end buds. And they were off to the side a little.

The next photo of a tree is taken with red inner bark and it looks like a Black cherry. From the northern Red oak where I saw the Hop hornbeam it is 24 degrees and about 50’ to the red bark tree.



Took a photo of a brush that showed evidence of a vine that squeezed it to grow in a
spiral.



I cut back to the tree that has all the vines growing on it. I wrote about this tree in a previous post. It has a compound leaf tree because I see the leaflet stem still on the twigs at the top of the tree.



The leaf stem is hard to see but click on the photo to enlarge and look at the top of the tree.

Then I came upon a bent over Redbud (took 3 photos) . The cracked stem is characteristic of this happening. Branches are again growing upward from the bent over stem.





Walking up a narrow ridge I took a photo (looking back) of the way the erosion has eaten the ground away.




I came upon some brush which was all mangled when something rubbed up against it but
it was too high for a deer. I don’t see any branch that fell against the brush and caused it. Another enigma.



Coming over the top of the hill and going on down the east side there is a predominance of dominate trees and there is not the brush that is prevalent on the west side.



Vertical bark pattern is interesting of this tree and it is a bur oak. The tree behind that is a white oak and the photo of the leaves on the ground show it is a white oak.






I hiked to the bottom over a couple of gullies and back up. On this side of the ridge I hear a bird chirping in the snow falling. I don’t remember hearing birds earlier today.

The closer of those 2 trees (center of the photo in the background) is a bur oak and the one further away is a Chinquapin.



On the way back we have blue sky. It was snowing a little the whole time I was in the
woods but on the way back the sky has broken up and the snow has stopped. Nothing
accumulated.

Again, hiking in the woods allows my heart to feast on the goodness of God. "How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!" Romans 11:33