British Columbia Trees

Tree life.

The reading from our book talks about how intelligent trees really are; they communicate with each other and give us a better, healthier existence.

If you are interested this website is very helpful. I happened to have the book in our school supplies so we didn't need the website. If you ever wanted to identify the tree this website has the trees name, leaf and how to identify also the pine cone and how to identify. Again the bark and the trees silhouette. Here is the book we used. Very helpful!

http://vancouverislandbigtrees.blogspot.ca/2010/12/arbutus-canadas-only-native-broad.html

We tried to find out what this tree was. It's not an evergreen because it has no leaves...yet!

Douglas Fir tree. We found this pine cone in the tree's bark and thought it might make a neat picture.

We found this pinecone in the yard and don't know what tree it came from.

Cedar bud

I know a lot about Cedar and how to identify them. So finding them was definitely easier than the other trees. I know a lot about the trees but I had a harder time identifying which tree was Red Cedar and which one was Yellow Cedar. For example this smaller tree down here I thought was Red Cedar. But what the book told me it was a young Yellow Cedar tree.

Yellow cedar

Me in the process of identifying this specific tree.

This is a leaf from the Red Cedar tree. 

We did find it on the ground, but we are pretty sure it is from the same tree.

This is the Red Cedar tree. We decided that putting the magnifying glass in front of  the tree would look interesting.   Plus then you could see the tree and it's bark easier.

Let's investigate a tree that you have in your yard!

Did you know:

Some herbal properties!

http://www.herbs2000.com/herbs/herbs_madrone.htm

http://honest-food.net/experiments-with-madrone-bark-tea/

Madrone Tea Eggs

What is a Madrone tree? A Madrone is actually an Arbutus tree. Which is it's genus name. 

Here is our tea....brewing. In China they take the tree's bark and steep it in boiling water.
Why do they do this? Well this a tradition in China and they actually put eggs in the tea.
Which makes the eggs a browny redish colour.

Another reason why we decide to make Madrone tea and do the eggs is because,
it is a traditional tea from British Columbia First Nations.
We also have been learning quite a bit about this..

 #1 the first step was to just boil the eggs for about 10 minutes.

#2  Then after the ten minutes we harvested the bark and put it in the water to steep. After about another 5 minutes we put the eggs in some cold water and waited another few minutes.

#3 After the cold water they were still warm but only warm to touch. So we cracked them and made different patterns. This was neat. You don't have to do that though. (fun and optional)

#4 Then we boiled them in the water for another 10 minutes.
Then again put them in cold water and crack open.
(One trick i like to use on boiled eggs is to roll them on a hard surface and then peel off the shell.)

Enjoy!