Winter Twigs

Purpose. While you may be reasonably familiar with deciduous trees and shrubs during the summer, odds are that you have trouble once the leaves fall. We have prepared a simple key and a set of photos organized in the same way. These tools should be sufficient to learn how to identify winter twigs for the common trees and shrubs in the Willamette Valley and beyond.

Coverage. While developed in the Willamette Valley, the key probably works reasonably well for most of Northwestern Oregon and Western Washington. Some different trees and shrubs start showing up in the Cascades and the dryer east side.

Development. After a Winter Twig workshop at Tualatin River NWR, the authors set out to supplement the available material available for such workshops in the Portland area. Inspired by the approach taken in Winter Twigs of Northwestern Oregon by Jean Siddell for Tryon Creek State Park, we created an updated key and took photos of the twigs covered to create a visual guide.

Dennis Deck and Ginny Maffitt

Below we provide a key to twigs and a visual guide in PDF format. When viewing the PDF, you can click on + to enlarge the document. Use the left arrow to return to this page. Contact dennis.d.deckATgmail.com if you need the Word or Powerpoint version of these documents.

Key. A simple key to the twigs of local trees and shrubs.
Visual guide. A slideshow with images of all the twigs and other features covered in the key.