Winter Trees

The teddy bears love going for walks at any time of the year. There always seems to be something different to look at. At this time of the year there are all the lovely Spring flowers to see.

"The only downside though," said Victoria "is that there are no leaves on the trees yet so I can't tell which is which." And she sighed a big sigh. "I'd love to know in advance which of those bare trees out there are going to turn into my favourite oak trees, so I can plan where to go to pick up lots of acorns to make things with, or where I might see those lovely hazel catkins which should be coming out any time now."

"Yes, it is very difficult" Bubbles responded. "But I do know a way you can tell specific trees even before they get any leaves on them! Would you like me to show you?"

Victoria was very intrigued. "Yes please!" she answered. "How will we be able to tell them apart?"

Bubbles went rummaging through an untidy pile of books and papers on his desk. He had been putting together some 'Tree Identification' sheets so that he could remember how to identify different trees at different times of the year.

The first paper he came across was one he had done last Summer when he had carefully drawn some pictures of leaves - but that would not be useful yet. There was more rustling and tutting until eventually Bubbles appeared back out from under his desk clutching a, quite creased by now, piece of paper. He was very out of breath!

"What do you think of this?" he asked Victoria, triumphantly holding the paper up for her to see.

Victoria peered closely at the paper, then carefully turned it the right way up! "This looks very interesting," she said, smiling. "There are pictures of the outlines of various trees with no leaves on them. Some of them have very unusual branches and curious shapes."

"Yes, indeed!" exclaimed Bubbles excitedly. "With this, we'll be able to name the different trees, even without the leaves to go by!"

They decided to go out straight away to their nearest woodland and see if they could put names to any of the bare trees there. They invited the other bears to join them and soon there was a large group ready to go out. They had put their scarves on first as it was rather chilly outside that day.

After a while they arrived at their nearest piece of woodland. It wasn't a big forest, nor even a large wood, but there were lots of trees.

At first everyone found it very tricky to match the outlines from Bubbles' checklist to the big trees in the real world, but with a little bit of practice it became easier and soon the bears were pointing at individual trees and naming them.

When there was a difference of opinion, the majority decided what they thought it might be. They noticed that Bubbles had left them a space on the checklist to note down where they had seen certain trees.

"Why do we have to do that?" asked Victoria.

"I thought it would be a nice idea if we said where we thought a horse chestnut was, for example," explained Bubbles. "And then in the Summer we could go back to the exact same place when all the leaves are out on the trees, and see if we were correct. I have another checklist with the leaves on it so we can match them up too."

"Oh, that's a good idea," said Henry. "It will be really exciting to see if we got them all right!"

So, even though there are no leaves yet, perhaps you could go out looking at the shapes of trees and seeing if you can name them too.

You can print off a copy of Bubbles' tree checklist here to take with you. And in another story later in the year the bears will let you know how they got on matching leaves with trees and there'll be a leaf checklist you can print off so you can check yours too. Let's see who gets the most right!