Identify Tree by Bark: 6 Bark Types and Example Trees

To identify a tree by bark, look at a mature trunk at about chest height and read five things in turn: texture, colour, the pores called lenticels, any thorns, and smell. Texture narrows the field most, and the other four separate the close cases.

Start with age. Virginia Tech's dendrology primer warns that bark can vary greatly through a tree's life and generally becomes rougher with age, so a sapling of almost any species has smooth bark. Northern red oak is a good example: smooth on young stems, then wide flat-topped ridges on old trunks. If you can only reach young stems, rely on leaves and buds instead (see identify tree by leaf).

Then confirm with whatever the ground offers. Fallen leaves, nuts, seed pods and twigs under the tree are usually from that tree, and one of them often decides between two bark matches.

Virginia Tech's primer and the Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia (Extension Master Gardener Elaine Mills) describe the same small set of patterns. This is the chart to learn.

• Smooth - American beech, which stays smooth its whole life; bigleaf magnolia has smooth light-gray bark; young eastern cottonwood is smooth and gray to yellow-green.
• Shaggy strips - shagbark hickory, whose long scales separate from the trunk at both ends; yellow birch peels into very fine small strips before older trees develop plates.
• Plates and scales - pitch pine has large plates; white oak is whitish or ashy gray, scaly on small stems and irregularly platy or blocky on large ones; black cherry has scales that resemble burnt potato chips.
• Square blocks - persimmon, with small blocky plates that look like charcoal briquettes and distinct orange furrows, and flowering dogwood, which the Master Gardeners compare to alligator hide.
• Ridges and furrows - black walnut, dark and quite deep; sweetgum, flat narrow ridges; eastern redcedar, fibrous; northern red oak, flat-topped ridges with shallow furrows that Virginia Tech says resemble ski tracks; tulip-poplar and green and white ash, interlacing ridges forming diamonds.
• Peeling sheets - American sycamore, shedding bark in great irregular brittle sheets, and river birch with many papery layers from salmon-pink to reddish-brown.

American hornbeam is the odd one out: smooth, but with sinewy ridges that give the trunk a muscular look.

When two trunks share a texture, these details split them.

• Lenticels (breathing pores) - the Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia guide notes they can be round, oval or diamond-shaped, or appear as horizontal lines, as on cherry and birch bark.
• Thorns - honeylocust, black locust and several hawthorns carry thorns, which the guide describes as modified stem shoots rather than true spines.
• Smell - yellow birch bark smells like wintergreen and sassafras has a cinnamon or spicy fragrance similar to root beer (Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia). Scratch a twig and sniff; do not taste.

These pairs cause most wrong guesses. Each split uses the published descriptions above.

• White oak vs northern red oak - ashy gray scales or blocks on white oak; flat-topped ridges with shallow ski-track furrows on red oak. Check a fallen leaf for bristle tips to confirm (oak leaves).
• American beech vs American hornbeam - both smooth; beech bark stays even all its life, while hornbeam has sinewy, muscular ridges.
• American sycamore vs river birch - sycamore sheds bark in great irregular brittle sheets; river birch curls in thin papery salmon-pink to reddish-brown layers.
• Persimmon vs flowering dogwood - both square blocks; persimmon's furrows show orange, while dogwood's blocks are the ones the Master Gardeners compare to alligator hide.
• Tulip-poplar vs ash - both show diamonds; ash has opposite leaves and buds, tulip-poplar has alternate ones, so look up at the twigs.
• Shagbark hickory vs yellow birch - both peel; hickory peels in long heavy strips loose at both ends, yellow birch in fine thin curls with a wintergreen smell.

Bark photos fail more often than leaf photos, mostly because they are too close or too dark. Take three shots: the whole trunk from a few steps back so the branching and form show, a square close-up at chest height in even light (no harsh sun across half the frame), and a close-up of any lenticels, thorns or peeling edge. Put a hand or a coin in the close-up for scale.

WoodLens reads bark as well as leaves and grain and returns a species with a confidence level and alternatives; when the top two candidates are close, add a leaf or fruit photo from the ground. TreeBarkId, one of the apps ranking for this search, says on its own site that it gives likely matches rather than guaranteed identifications and that its photo-based health check cannot inspect roots, internal decay or structural risk - a sensible warning for any bark app. If the tree may fall on a house, ask a certified arborist rather than an app.

Bark is also the last clue left on firewood and on the waney edge of rough lumber. If a split log still carries its bark, use the textures above, then check the end grain against our wood grain identification page. The species pages for hickory, American beech, sycamore and black cherry show what the wood under each bark looks like.