Illinois Heritage Grove

The Illinois Heritage Grove contains various trees that are common in Illinois. Posts containing plaques show the name of the tree, a picture of the leaf shape, and a picture of the tree's overall shape. It's amazing how many different types of trees are in the grove.

Ellie noticed some trees with white plastic wrapped around the trunk and asked about it. I showed her how the bark of the tree was missing underneath the plastic and explained that the park workers had covered the trees in plastic to protect the tender wood underneath. Then she asked what happened to the bark. I explained that deer and other animals like to eat the bark. We then looked around for signs of deer but could not find any.

We noticed that some of the trees contained beautiful looking red berries. We pondered why the fruit had not been eaten by birds who should be trying to eat everything possible in preparation for winter. I suggested that it might be because the fruit didn't taste good. Ellie thought that it might be because many of the birds had started migrating south. It's probably a little of both.

We looked around for the post that would identify the trees with the berries, but couldn't find any. So, we consulted our tree book. This actually turned out to be sort of a lesson in classifying AND geography. First, we compared the leaves and berries of our trees to the ones in the book. There were a few where the berries matched but the leaves didn't. We found some where the leaves matched, but there was no mention of berries. By the time we had narrowed down the choices, we found two that were close. Then, we looked at the maps for each. Only this one came close to matching.