Shrubbery

July 7, 2006 9:59 AM

What type of tree/shrub is in this picture?

This photo was taken somewhere in Montana

posted by geonags to science & nature (8 comments total)

They're kind of hard to see, but they could be scrub oak, some kind of mountain juniper, or joshua trees.
posted by mds35 at 10:10 AM on July 7, 2006

I would say scrub oak or juniper/mountain-cedar.
posted by mattbucher at 10:12 AM on July 7, 2006

Juniper or possibly cypress.
posted by kc0dxh at 10:15 AM on July 7, 2006

Plains Cottonwood?
posted by LoriFLA at 10:39 AM on July 7, 2006

It would help to know what general part of Montana you were in. At first, it looks like a pinyon-juniper woodland, but that doesn't really seem to occur in Montana. They're also probably not oaks or cypress, since they don't occur naturally in Montana.

Using this map, my best guess is that they're some kind of pine (which doesn't rule out pinyon pine). They look a little like the white-bark pines here.
posted by driveler at 10:51 AM on July 7, 2006

Montana is too far North and too cold for piñon to grow. I think it is a juniper.

Thanks driveler, I never knew that pinyon was an alternate spelling for piñon.
posted by onhazier at 11:00 AM on July 7, 2006

Um, they're definitely not joshua trees.
posted by Sara Anne at 1:39 PM on July 7, 2006

I can’t tell from the largest size of that picture: what kind of leaves do these trees have? Are they needles or broad and flat ovals? What about the bark? Is it scaly or thin and paper-like?
posted by ijoshua at 2:01 PM on July 7, 2006