And the Answer Is…..

Good morning Everyone! 

I want to thank everyone who played “Guess Which Tree” along with me yesterday.  It was really interesting to read everyone’s answers, and I learned something in reading them, too.  

I’ll give any of you who didn’t participate yesterday one last chance to take your guess – the question was, which one of the two trees shown in the picture is a pine tree?

Trees 1

Trees 2

And the winner is …..the tree on the left!  As several people commented, it is the bark on the tree that gives it away as a pine tree.  It also occurred to me as I studied the pictures after I took them that I don’t recall ever seeing moss grow on a pine tree in the Southeast United States before, but that may just be because I haven’t been looking.  (My more woodsy/hiking friends – does moss usually grow on pine trees?)  Mark says that the tree on the right is an oak tree.  I wouldn’t know; I can recognize and name a pine tree, a ginkgo tree, a dogwood, a Bradford Pear Tree and a magnolia tree, and that’s about it. 

Fortunately, whether you chose the correct tree or not, you still won this challenge.  How?  To even make a choice, you had to really look at both trees; you had to admire the difference between them in terms of bark texture and bark color; you had to discard most of the ideas our mind automatically “sees” when it hears the word “tree,” such as branches and leaves, and recognize a tree. 

In a nutshell, then, the point of the exercise was to remind me (and maybe one or two others out there) that sometimes, it is okay to forget about the forest and admire the trees.  I hope you got a chance to do that yesterday.

And, of course, the view of the forest is worthwhile too…..

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy