T r e e s  o f  N o r t h  C a r o l i n a

About

Scope. This work treats the native and naturalized species of trees occurring in North Carolina (naturalized species are indicated by an asterisk [*] preceding the species name). The work does not treat species known exclusively from cultivation. The checklist is based primarily on the work of Dr. Alan Weakley and Will Cook (see Development team below). Anyone familiar with our arboreal flora will note that the distinction between tall shrubs and small trees is not always clear. We recognize not everyone may agree with our decisions, but we have tried to err on the side of inclusion, rather than exclusion, to facilitate identification.

We strive to include images of bark, twigs, leaves, reproductive organs, and distribution maps for all species within our scope. We recognize that, at present, our task is not complete and users will find a number of taxa without a full complement of images. Thus, the work presented at this time is admittedly incomplete. However, given that the keys are complete, we hope that users will find it nonetheless useful and bear with us as we fill in photographic gaps over time.

Keys. Two types of identification keys are incorporated, dichotomous keys (as traditional) and linear keys. The latter are an adaptation to mobile delivery, taking advantage of the now familiar linear scrolling function in mobile devices and example photos to facilitate quickly narrowing to the level of genus or groups of genera. It is important to recognize that although appearing as a list, linear keys differ significantly in that they encode nested components of exclusivity. This means that once a character is listed for a particular taxon or group of taxa, no other taxa further down in the linear key will exhibit that specific character. For example, in the key to broad leaved species with simple, palmately-lobed leaves, the last character in the key is "Plants unarmed". If this character was merely one in a true list, then all unarmed taxa should be included in the field (including those appearing at the top of the page, like palmetto and mulberry, etc.). However, the character is nested within a linear key, thus only four genera are included (i.e., Ficus, Hibiscus, Liquidambar, and Platanus), as all other genera have already been keyed out in order by the preceding characters. Thus, to properly use a linear key, one must always begin at the start. Treating the key as a mere list and jumping ahead to a particular category may not result in an exclusive narrowing of taxa.

Future. We consider this work a "living" resource and thus seek to continue to add images, tweak content, improve keys, etc. over time. Future versions will be identified by sequentially increasing version numbers.

Copyright. Re-use of any image in this work identified as copyrighted, for any purpose what-so-ever, is prohibited without the express written permission of the copyright owner. For permission to re-use any image, please contact the copyright owner directly. Highslide JS is licensed under the MIT license.

Development team. As we plan to continue to develop this resource over time and anticipate some turn-over in project contributors, we've decided to simply refer to the development team as the Trees of North Carolina Working Group. Contributors and their contributions are identified below:

Suggested citation. Please cite this work as: Trees of North Carolina Working Group. 2014–present. Trees of North Carolina. Version 1.0. North Carolina State University, Raleigh. [http://herbarium.ncsu.edu/tnc/; (date accessed), if online version used].

Copyright 2014–present
Last updated Dec 2021