Eva Pike really loves trees.

“They have a special kind of power,” the 6-year-old Cornish resident said as she held up two pine cones for her mother, Namone Pike, to examine. Eva recently took an interest in trees, and after seeing the event posted in the ConnectCornish newsletter, the family decided to join.

Did Eva have a favorite tree?

“No, because I like all of them,” she replied. In particular, she liked the different patterns all the trees have.

Eva was among around 20 people — about half of them children — who took part in a “Tree Detectives” walk Saturday morning at Blow-Me-Down Farm, which is part of Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park.

The hourlong walk was led by Steve Mortillo, natural resources program lead, and Joey Sullivan, natural resources program intern through the Student Conservation Association. Mortillo and Sullivan work at both Saint-Gaudens and Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock.

“It’s such an interesting place. It’s just beautiful,” Mortillo said as people slowly began to arrive at the farm. “The trees here are amazing.”

He pointed to a row of hemlock trees that had once formed a neat row of hedges near a building they now towered above.

“The second we stop pruning them, they’ll grow,” Mortillo said.

The tale of the tree

When identifying a tree, people should first determine whether it is hardwood or softwood, Sullivan said while looking at an ash. That can be done by examining the leaves: If they are flat and wide, they are likely hardwood. Needles and cones tend to be characteristics of softwood trees.

Next is the way the branches grow. There are two branching patterns: Opposite, where the branches grow directly across from each other, and alternate, where they vary from left to right.

Then there’s the shape of the leaves: Are there multiple leaflets, known as compound, per leaf, or do they spring forward one at a time?

Using that method, Sullivan explained that ash trees can be identified as hardwood. He asked the group to look up at the ash tree’s canopy to see how their branches form opposite each other and how their leaves formed clusters, like compounds.

“Really your only choice at that point is ash,” he said. Then Mortillo pointed to the ash tree’s bark, which forms a diamond pattern, before delivering sobering news: “We’re about to lose 90% of ash from our forests,” he said, due to the infestation of the emerald ash borer beetle.

The ash borer, which burrows winding trenches under ash bark and kills the tree, has been a concern for years as it infests forests across the region. Sullivan has been working on a plan to manage the roughly 1,100 ash trees in both Cornish and Woodstock that are at risk from the ash borer — the beetle has already been detected in Cornish. Sullivan said they are not going to clear-cut the ash trees and instead focus on ones that will fall on trails as they die.

“Where do we have stands of ash trees and where is the forest going to be impacted visually?” he asked.

Give and take

At each stop, Sullivan and Mortillo asked participants what they observed. They encouraged people — particularly the children — to touch the leaves and bark.

The group made stops at a sugar maple, tamarack, eastern hemlock and black locust, which was the favorite of 11-year-old Samuel Breyer Essiam, who attended the walk with his older brother, Eli, 14, and their grandparents, Joanna and Stephen Breyer, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, whom they were visiting from Massachusetts. (The Breyers have a summer home in Plainfield.)

“I really liked seeing that big tree that only lives 100 years,” Samuel said, referencing the black locust that Mortillo had earlier explained “grows incredibly fast” because it pulls in nitrogen from its surroundings to fuel its growth.

“Farmers love this tree,” Mortillo said, adding that its hard wood and rot-resistant nature made it ideal for fence posts and ax handles.

Eli Breyer Essiam said he enjoyed learning new things on the walk.

“I liked looking at different trees and the texture of the bark,” he said.

At a stop at an eastern hemlock, Sullivan noted how the species is slow-growth and is “one of the most shade-tolerant trees in New England,” meaning it does not need a lot of sunlight to flourish. Hemlocks can live for hundreds of years and in the winter provide food for turkeys and deer.

“It’s really a great wildlife value tree,” he said.

But eastern hemlocks are also at risk: The hemlock woolly adelgid and elongate hemlock scale have proved destructive.

“We’re right at the border where they’re viable,” Mortillo said of the two invasive species. Currently, the colder climate in New Hampshire stops them from flourishing. “As the climate continues to change,” that might not be the case. “After that, you’re really in a fight to preserve that native structure.”

Seeing the number of children on the hike — and their wonder — made naturalist Sharon Burnett, who splits her time between the Upper Valley and Tennessee — think about what it means for the future. Walks like the one on Saturday help “to make the younger generation aware because they are our next stewards,” she said.

“Take them out and have them actually touch a tree,” Burnett said, instead of staring at a screen. “There’s, like, the actual process, the actual sense of place.”

Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.

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