The Most Common Trees in Georgia (and How to Spot Them)
At Classic City Arborists, we’ve done all the homework and taken all the tests to learn as much about the different kinds of trees as we can stuff into our finite heads—it’s our job, after all! But being able to determine what kind of tree you’re looking at can also be a useful skill for anyone to have, even if you aren’t an arborist.
Beyond the simple satisfaction you get when you look at a tree and know what it is, recognizing the different types of trees can help you assess the ones you have on your property, or the ones outside your in-law’s house. Knowing a tree’s species means you can look that specific tree species up, and learn what to expect from them. Will they drop all their leaves in the fall? Should you worry about them in a heavy rainstorm?
There are too many species to know all of them by heart, of course, and certainly too many to recognize even half of them on sight. But there are a few main types of trees you’ll find around Georgia, and more specifically, the Athens and Watkinsville areas.
Did You Know? Georgia is home to approximately 250 different tree species. That’s no small number, but it’s nothing compared to the whopping 60,000 different species of trees on our planet!
Maple
Maples are easy to spot thanks to their palmate leaves. That’s a fancy word for a leaf stem that has multiple lobes spreading out from the base. If you’ve seen the Canadian flag, you’ve seen a maple leaf!
The most common maple trees in Georgia are the sugar maple, red maple, and striped maple. All three lose their leaves in the fall, but not before offering a stunning display of oranges, yellows, reds, and even rusty purples. Their fallen leaves make great leaf piles for children (and fur babies) to play in.
Learn more about red maples here!
Hickory
Hickory trees, when left to their own devices, can get massive. We’re talking heights over 60 feet and crown spans of more than 40 feet on average! There a bunch of different species of hickories native to Georgia and the Southeast, including their cousins, the pecan tree.
All hickories have similar leaf patterns, making them easy to identify. They grow stalks, each of which will have anywhere from 5 to 17 leaves on it. Barring mutations, the leaves grow in oppositional pairs, which means they mirror each other along either side of the stalk. One leaf grows from the end of the stalk, making the total number odd. The pair of leaves closest to the base of the stalk are usually much smaller than the rest.
The leaves themselves can range from 2 to 8 inches long, depending on the age and size of the tree, and have little serrations all along their edges. These serrations can be sharp and pointy, or more rounded, but they’re almost always subtle.
Hickories are also characterized by their bark, which has ridges that are universally vertical, rather than horizontal.
Learn more about shagbark hickories here!
Oaks
Again, there are a few different types of oak trees native to our area, including white oaks, scarlet oaks, water oaks, willow oaks, and live oaks. Live oaks are probably the most widely known; they’re the ancient behemoths that grow along Georgia’s coastline, like Savannah, and are always dripping with Spanish moss.
Any oak is pretty easy to recognize by lobed leaves. These lobes can be rounded or spiky, kind of like the maple leaf, but they’re always long and skinny. Oaks also have gently ridged bark—not fissured, mind you. You won’t find massive cracks you could stick a penny into. Think rough, or bumpy.
And last, but certainly not least, come the pine trees. Pines make up the larger portion of Georgia’s forests, and are probably the most easily recognized. Though there are dozens of pine species, like the loblolly, eastern white, and longleaf pine, all of them have the characteristic, evergreen needles that serve as leaves. When young, pines grow tall and skinny. Once they reach maturity, they’ll start filling out near the base and end up with a more triangular shape that you might associate with Christmas trees (although real Christmas trees aren’t actually usually pines!).
