In the US there are about 800 species of trees. That's a lot, but it is manageable.

Do you know how many are in the much smaller country of Costa Rica? At least 2,300. And you are much more likely to encounter a variety of trees in one area than in the US. This is also just enough that learning them all is beyond all but "tree people" specifically "Costa Rica tree people"

This summer my goal is to learn the US genuses dassit.

I was reading a book by an entomologist and he often didn't know what tree he was looking at and I was shaking my head and shaming the man until I looked into it more.

That is too many trees.

Also with tropical trees they have all these vines and hangers on and you don't even know if you have found a leaf from the trunk you are interested in.

It's really hard to identify a tree in a rainforest apparently.

Which means those of us in temperate regions have no excuses for not knowing our local major tree groups.

@futurebird
My favorite tree tidbit is that they’re not a clade, but more like a strategy. A maple is more closely related to parsley than to pine.

Also with tropical trees they have all these vines and hangers on and you don't even know if you have found a leaf from the trunk you are interested in.

It's really hard to identify a tree in a rainforest apparently.

Which means those of us in temperate regions have no excuses for not knowing our local major tree groups.

In the US there are about 800 species of trees. That's a lot, but it is manageable.

Do you know how many are in the much smaller country of Costa Rica? At least 2,300. And you are much more likely to encounter a variety of trees in one area than in the US. This is also just enough that learning them all is beyond all but "tree people" specifically "Costa Rica tree people"

This summer my goal is to learn the US genuses dassit.

@stevegis_ssg

It's a bit like "army ants" which aren't really a coherent group of ants, but rather all kinds of ants who have arrived at the same "lifestyle choices"

@futurebird @stevegis_ssg

it is, but in many species that can be trees, there's also some individual variation possible; on the mountainside near me there are an awful lot of oaks (Quercus gambelii, probably), but they are seldom more than 2 meters tall and often look more a bush or a shrub than a tree. But under the right conditions they can reach 20 meters tall. So whether they're a bush or a tree depends on local conditions.

@llewelly @futurebird

You know, I considered "behavior" for my post and went for "strategy" instead but maybe I was right the first time.

@stevegis_ssg @futurebird
I think either is ok?

I'm not a botanist, but the terminology that botanists use is "habit". An oak or a maple may have either a tree habit or a bush habit depending on local environmental conditions.

@llewelly @stevegis_ssg

The term used in myrmecology for the "army ant lifestyle" is "Army Ant Syndrome"

Which I find needlessly judgemental. It makes it sound like they are sick and need to be cured to be normal ants again.

Although, the prospect of not having a house and just running around in a big horde raiding and living it up sometimes sounds appealing. Can people get "army ant syndrome?"

@llewelly @stevegis_ssg

The term used in myrmecology for the "army ant lifestyle" is "Army Ant Syndrome"

Which I find needlessly judgemental. It makes it sound like they are sick and need to be cured to be normal ants again.

Although, the prospect of not having a house and just running around in a big horde raiding and living it up sometimes sounds appealing. Can people get "army ant syndrome?"

@llewelly @stevegis_ssg

What "Army Ant Syndrome" is really about is a group of small animals deciding to collectively play the role of a small roaming predator of a much larger size such as a badger, small cat or lizard. They roam, they catch food, they sleep in the hollow of a tree, they have a mass equivalent to a house-cat and eat similar food to animals of similar mass.

But they are ... multiple. It's wonderful!

@futurebird Learning your tree barks is the next level so deciduous trees can be identified in the winter. Branch arrangement, alternate or opposite, makes it possible to take an educated guess what you are looking at from a distance. Mushroom hunters have to know the trees to find what they are looking for as well. Then you can start to understand why this tree and mushroom grow where they do. What is their place in the biome they inhabit. Who depends on which tree will be next.

@futurebird @llewelly @stevegis_ssg even "army ant" feels like a misnomer. They seem to self-direct, it feels like it has more in common with anarchy than the heirarchy an army implies