Identify Tree by Bark: 5 Bark Types and 20 Examples

Look at the trunk at eye level and decide which of five types the bark belongs to: papery and peeling, scaly or plated, furrowed into ridges, smooth, or marked with horizontal pores called lenticels. That one decision, taken from the Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia (MGNV) guide by Elaine Mills, cuts the list of candidates sharply. Then check colour, the pattern of the ridges and, for a few trees, the smell.

Two things to keep in mind:

• Age changes bark. MGNV notes that young trees usually have smooth bark, which roughens as they age. Compare mature trunks with mature descriptions, and look at a young branch too.
• Bark narrows it down; it rarely settles it alone. Confirm with buds, twigs, fallen leaves or fruit under the tree. Our tree identification by leaf guide covers those.

MGNV recommends winter for studying bark, when leaves no longer hide the trunk. The examples on this page are trees of eastern North America.

Papery or peeling. Thin outer layers come away in sheets or strips.

• River birch: many layers of salmon-pink to reddish-brown papery bark (MGNV).
• Paper birch: white bark peeling in horizontal, curly strips (American Forests).
• American sycamore: sheds in great, irregular, brittle sheets (MGNV).

Scaly or plated. The surface breaks into scales, plates or blocks.

• Black cherry: dark scales that MGNV compares to burnt potato chips.
• Flowering dogwood: splits into small square blocks like alligator hide (MGNV).
• Shagbark hickory: long strips attached in the middle and curling away at both ends (MGNV).
• Sugar maple: a surface American Forests describes as crackled, like old china.

Furrowed. Deep grooves separate ridges.

• Black walnut: dark, quite deep furrows (MGNV).
• Sweetgum: flat, narrow ridges with moderate fissures (MGNV).
• Ash: interlaced corky ridges forming distinct diamonds (MGNV); American Forests describes white ash as intersecting ridges.
• Eastern white pine: deep furrows between thick, corky ridges (American Forests).
• Eastern redcedar: a fibrous, stringy texture (MGNV).
• White oak and northern red oak: see the next section.

Smooth.

• American beech: smooth, unbroken bark for its whole life (MGNV, American Forests).
• American hornbeam: smooth but with widely spaced, sinewy ridges (MGNV).

Lenticel-marked. Horizontal pores or warts stand out.

• Sweet birch: distinct horizontal lenticels (MGNV).
• Elderberry: scattered, warty lenticels (MGNV).

• White oak vs northern red oak. Both are furrowed. American Forests' rule: on white oak the ridges are broken horizontally; on northern red oak the ridges run uninterrupted up the trunk.
• Sugar maple vs red maple. Sugar maple bark looks crackled like old china (American Forests). On red maple, American Forests points out concentric cracks from a fungal response called target canker, which gives a bullseye pattern on some trunks.
• Black cherry vs other scaly bark. Scrape a small patch of outer bark on a twig: American Forests says black cherry gives a bitter, almond scent. Sassafras gives a sweet, licorice-like smell from safrole.

Only scrape a small twig, not the trunk, and do not taste bark.

Bark is two layers doing two jobs. American Forests explains that the inner bark, the phloem, carries sugars made in the leaves around the tree, while the outer cork layer is dead tissue that stops the trunk drying out and keeps insects and pathogens away. Lenticels are pores in that cork that let the living tissue underneath exchange gases.

As the wood inside grows, it pushes the bark outward. Each species responds in its own way: some shed thin layers (birches, sycamore), some split into vertical furrows and ridges (oaks, walnut, pine), and a few, like beech, keep stretching a thin smooth skin. That is why the pattern is consistent enough within a species to identify it.

Yes, as a starting point. Free options:

• Pl@ntNet lets you tag a photo as bark (its documentation lists bark among the plant parts you can choose), so the photo is compared against other bark photos. Pl@ntNet is free and run by four French public research institutes.
• Tree ID from the Woodland Trust is free for iPhone and Android and identifies native and common non-native UK trees from leaves, bark, twigs, buds, flowers or fruit.
• TreeBarkId is an app that identifies from bark, leaf or whole-tree photos; its site does not state the price.
• Arbor Day Foundation's What Tree Is That? is a free online key, but it starts from your region and leaves rather than bark.

Google Lens can also be tried; see identifying trees by leaf and our comparison of tree ID apps. PlantLens gives a confidence level and alternative candidates with each result.

Bark photos are harder for apps than flowers. In a 2023 PLOS ONE study of plant ID apps, even the best did better on flowers than leaves, so add a photo of a twig, bud or leaf whenever you can.

• Photograph a mature trunk at chest height, straight on, in even light; low side light shows texture best.
• Take one close-up that fills the frame with bark, and one from a few steps back showing the whole trunk and how the bark pattern runs.
• Put your hand or a key in one shot for scale; ridge width and plate size matter.
• Add a photo of a twig with buds, or a leaf or fruit from under the tree.
• Note anything a photo misses: a smell when a twig is scraped, whether strips peel, and whether the tree is young or old.

Research and drafting for this page were done with the help of AI, and every description was then checked line by line against the sources listed at the end of the page. Sources were opened on 2026-09-25. If you find a mistake, tell us and we will correct it.