34 Most Common Trees in North America

The most common trees in North America depend on the region. Red maple is the most abundant tree in the eastern U.S., loblolly pine and sweetgum in the South, Douglas fir and lodgepole pine in the West, and black spruce, white spruce and balsam fir across the boreal forest of Canada and Alaska. Quaking aspen is the most widespread tree on the continent, growing from Newfoundland to Alaska and south into the mountains of Mexico. Other very common trees include sugar maple, white oak, paper birch, eastern white pine, ponderosa pine and eastern red cedar.

Contents

The Most Widespread Trees
Common Trees of the Eastern Forests
Trees of the Northern (Boreal) Forest
Common Trees of the West
Most Common Trees by Region

The U.S. and Canada have hundreds of native tree species, and forest covers about a third of each country. The trees change most with climate: broadleaf hardwoods dominate the humid East, conifers dominate the dry West and the cold North, and the Great Plains between them have trees only along rivers and in windbreaks. This guide covers the most common and widespread native trees of the U.S. and Canada.

The Most Widespread Trees
Common Trees of the Eastern Forests
Trees of the Northern (Boreal) Forest
Common Trees of the West
Most Common Trees by Region

Tree	Botanical name	Type	Where it grows
Quaking Aspen	Populus tremuloides	Deciduous	Canada, Alaska, the northern U.S. and the western mountains
Red Maple	Acer rubrum	Deciduous	Eastern North America, from Newfoundland to Florida and Texas
Paper Birch	Betula papyrifera	Deciduous	Canada, Alaska and the northern U.S.
Balsam Poplar	Populus balsamifera	Deciduous	Canada, Alaska and the northern U.S.
Willows	Salix nigra and other Salix	Deciduous	Stream banks and wetlands across the continent
Sugar Maple	Acer saccharum	Deciduous	Northeast, Great Lakes, southeastern Canada and the Appalachians
White Oak	Quercus alba	Deciduous	Eastern U.S. and southern Ontario and Quebec
Northern Red Oak	Quercus rubra	Deciduous	Eastern U.S. and southeastern Canada
American Beech	Fagus grandifolia	Deciduous	Eastern U.S. and southeastern Canada
American Basswood	Tilia americana	Deciduous	Eastern and central U.S. and southeastern Canada
Tulip Tree	Liriodendron tulipifera	Deciduous	Eastern U.S. and southern Ontario
Black Cherry	Prunus serotina	Deciduous	Eastern U.S., southeastern Canada and parts of the Southwest and Mexico
Green Ash	Fraxinus pennsylvanica	Deciduous	Eastern and central North America, west to the Rockies
Shagbark Hickory	Carya ovata	Deciduous	Eastern and central U.S. and southern Quebec and Ontario
American Sycamore	Platanus occidentalis	Deciduous	Stream banks and bottomlands of the eastern and central U.S.
Black Locust	Robinia pseudoacacia	Deciduous	Native to the Appalachians and Ozarks; naturalized across the U.S. and southern Canada
Sweetgum	Liquidambar styraciflua	Deciduous	Southeastern and south-central U.S., and Mexico
Eastern White Pine	Pinus strobus	Evergreen conifer	Northeast, Great Lakes, Appalachians and southeastern Canada
Loblolly Pine	Pinus taeda	Evergreen conifer	Southeastern U.S., from New Jersey to Texas
Eastern Red Cedar	Juniperus virginiana	Evergreen conifer	Eastern and central U.S. and southern Ontario
Eastern Hemlock	Tsuga canadensis	Evergreen conifer	Northeast, Great Lakes, Appalachians and southeastern Canada
Bald Cypress	Taxodium distichum	Deciduous conifer	Swamps of the Southeast and the Mississippi Valley
Black Spruce	Picea mariana	Evergreen conifer	Canada and Alaska, south to the northern Great Lakes and New England
White Spruce	Picea glauca	Evergreen conifer	Canada, Alaska and the northern U.S.
Balsam Fir	Abies balsamea	Evergreen conifer	Eastern Canada, the Great Lakes and New England
Jack Pine	Pinus banksiana	Evergreen conifer	Canada, the Great Lakes and New England
Tamarack	Larix laricina	Deciduous conifer	Canada, Alaska and the northern U.S.
Douglas Fir	Pseudotsuga menziesii	Evergreen conifer	Pacific Coast and the Rocky Mountains, from British Columbia to Mexico
Ponderosa Pine	Pinus ponderosa	Evergreen conifer	Mountains and plateaus of the western U.S. and southern British Columbia
Lodgepole Pine	Pinus contorta	Evergreen conifer	Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Coast and western Canada
Western Red Cedar	Thuja plicata	Evergreen conifer	Pacific Northwest, from Alaska to northern California, and inland to Idaho and Montana
Red Alder	Alnus rubra	Deciduous	Pacific Coast, from southeast Alaska to California
Coast Live Oak	Quercus agrifolia	Evergreen	Coast Ranges of California and northern Baja California
Giant Sequoia	Sequoiadendron giganteum	Evergreen conifer	About 70 groves on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, California

The Most Widespread Trees

Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides)

Read our guide to Quaking Aspen

Quaking aspen has the largest natural range of any tree in North America. It is named for its round leaves, which have flattened stalks and tremble in the slightest breeze. It has smooth, pale, greenish-white bark and grows 40 to 60 feet tall. Its leaves turn gold in fall, lighting up whole mountainsides in the Rockies. Aspen spreads by root suckers into large groves that are one single plant, and the Pando grove in Utah is one of the largest living things on Earth.

Red Maple (Acer rubrum)

Read our guide to Red Maple

Red maple is the most abundant tree in the eastern U.S. and grows in almost any habitat, from swamps to dry ridges. It grows 40 to 70 feet tall, with three-lobed, toothed leaves that turn red, orange or yellow in fall. It is red in every season: red flowers on bare branches in late winter, red winged seeds in spring, red leaf stalks in summer and red twigs in winter.

Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera)

Paper birch is the white-barked birch of the North, easy to recognize by its chalky white bark that peels in papery strips. It grows 50 to 70 feet tall and is one of the first trees to return after fire or logging. Native peoples used its bark for canoes, containers and wigwams. It needs cool summers and is short-lived and prone to borers in hot climates.

Balsam Poplar (Populus balsamifera)

Balsam poplar is a fast-growing poplar of northern floodplains and lake shores, 60 to 80 feet tall. Its large, sticky buds have a strong, sweet, resinous smell in spring that is often the first sign of spring in the North. It grows farther north than almost any other broadleaf tree, to the edge of the Arctic tundra.

Willows (Salix nigra and other Salix)

Read our guide to Willows

North America has around 100 native willows, from creeping Arctic shrubs to trees. The largest is black willow, 30 to 60 feet tall, which grows along rivers from southern Canada to Mexico. Willows have long, narrow leaves and fuzzy catkins in early spring, and they grow fast from cuttings and root easily in wet soil, so they are used to stabilize eroding stream banks.

Common Trees of the Eastern Forests

Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)

Sugar maple is the tree of maple syrup and the maple leaf on Canada’s flag. It grows 60 to 80 feet tall, with five-lobed leaves and some of the brightest orange and red fall color of any tree. It is one of the most common trees of the northern hardwood forest, along with beech and yellow birch. It takes about 40 gallons of its sap to make one gallon of syrup.

White Oak (Quercus alba)

White oak is the most common oak in eastern North America, 60 to 100 feet tall, with a broad crown, pale gray, scaly bark and leaves with 7 to 9 rounded lobes. Its sweet acorns, which ripen in one year, feed deer, turkeys, bears and squirrels. Its strong, watertight wood is used for furniture, floors and whiskey barrels.

Northern Red Oak (Quercus rubra)

Northern red oak grows 60 to 80 feet tall and has leaves with 7 to 11 pointed, bristle-tipped lobes, and bark with long, shiny, flat-topped ridges. It grows faster than white oak and is one of the most important timber trees in the East. It is the provincial tree of Prince Edward Island and the state tree of New Jersey.

American Beech (Fagus grandifolia)

American beech grows 50 to 80 feet tall, with smooth, light gray bark that stays smooth on old trees and toothed, strongly veined leaves that turn copper in fall. It is very shade tolerant, and young trees keep their dead leaves through winter. Many beeches are dying from beech bark disease, and since 2012 from beech leaf disease, which is spreading from Ohio.

American Basswood (Tilia americana)

American basswood, or American linden, grows 60 to 80 feet tall, with large, heart-shaped, lopsided leaves. In early summer it has clusters of small, very fragrant, creamy flowers that hang from a long, leaf-like bract, and bees make a prized honey from them. Its soft, light wood is the favorite of woodcarvers. It is often planted as a street tree.

Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera)

Tulip tree, or tulip poplar, is one of the tallest hardwoods in eastern North America, 70 to 120 feet tall, with a long, straight trunk. It has four-lobed leaves with a flat, notched tip and, in late spring, tulip-shaped, greenish-yellow flowers with an orange band. It is the state tree of Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Black Cherry (Prunus serotina)

Black cherry grows 50 to 80 feet tall, with dark, scaly bark and narrow, glossy, finely toothed leaves. Long clusters of white flowers in spring are followed by dark purple cherries in late summer that birds spread widely. Its reddish-brown wood is one of the most valued furniture woods in North America. Its wilted leaves are poisonous to livestock.

Green Ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica)

Green ash has the largest range of any American ash and was one of the most planted street trees in the U.S. and Canada. It grows 50 to 70 feet tall, with compound leaves of 5 to 9 leaflets in opposite pairs. Since the emerald ash borer from Asia was found near Detroit in 2002, it has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees in most eastern states and several Canadian provinces, so ash is no longer planted.

Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata)

Shagbark hickory is easy to recognize by its gray bark, which peels in long strips that curl out from the trunk. It grows 60 to 80 feet tall, with leaves of usually five leaflets that turn golden in fall, and its sweet nuts are the best of any wild hickory. Its tough wood is used for tool handles and smoking meat.

American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis)

American sycamore is one of the most massive hardwoods in North America, 70 to 100 feet tall, with a trunk that can be 10 feet or more across. Its bark peels off in patches, leaving the upper trunk white. It has large, maple-like leaves and round seed balls that hang on long stalks through winter.

Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia)

Black locust grows 40 to 80 feet tall, with compound leaves of many small, round leaflets, a pair of sharp spines at each leaf, and deeply furrowed bark. In late spring it has hanging clusters of fragrant white flowers. It needs full sun and spreads fast by root suckers, so outside its native range, including in parts of the West and Canada, it is considered invasive. Its rot-resistant wood makes long-lasting fence posts.

Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua)

Sweetgum is one of the most common trees in the South, where it quickly takes over logged land and old fields. It grows 60 to 100 feet tall, with star-shaped leaves that turn purple, red and yellow in fall and spiky, round seed balls that litter lawns all winter.

Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus)

Eastern white pine is the tallest tree in eastern North America, often 80 to 100 feet and occasionally over 150 feet tall. Its soft, blue-green needles are in bundles of five, and its cones are long and slender. In colonial times the tallest white pines were reserved for the masts of the British Royal Navy. It is the state tree of Maine and Michigan and the provincial tree of Ontario.

Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda)

Loblolly pine is the most common tree in the southern U.S. and the most important timber tree in the country, grown on millions of acres of plantations. It grows fast to 60 to 100 feet tall, with needles 6 to 9 inches long in bundles of three and cones with sharp prickles.

Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana)

Eastern red cedar is the most widespread conifer in the eastern U.S. It is a dense, pyramid-shaped juniper, 30 to 50 feet tall, with scale-like leaves and blue, berry-like cones that feed birds. It grows on dry, rocky or poor soil and spreads fast into old fields and prairies where fires no longer burn, so on the Great Plains it has become a serious problem on grasslands. A southern form, called southern red cedar, grows along the Southeast and Gulf coasts.

Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis)

Eastern hemlock is a graceful evergreen with drooping branch tips, short, flat needles with two white lines underneath and tiny cones. It grows 60 to 100 feet tall in cool, shady ravines and along streams. Since the 1950s the hemlock woolly adelgid, a tiny insect from Asia, has killed many hemlocks from Georgia to Maine.

Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum)

Bald cypress is a conifer that drops its needles in fall, after they turn rusty orange. It grows 50 to 100 feet tall in swamps and along rivers, with a swollen base and woody “knees” around it, and it can live for more than 1,000 years. It is the state tree of Louisiana. Despite its swamp home, it grows well in ordinary, well-drained yards as far north as Canada.

Trees of the Northern (Boreal) Forest

Black Spruce (Picea mariana)

Read our guide to Black Spruce

Black spruce is the most common tree in Canada, dominating huge areas of bog and poorly drained land across the boreal forest. It is a slender, often scraggly tree, 15 to 50 feet tall, with short, blue-green needles, small cones that cluster near the top and a narrow, spire-like top. Its cones open after fire, which reseeds burned forests. It is the provincial tree of Newfoundland and Labrador.

White Spruce (Picea glauca)

White spruce grows across the boreal forest from Newfoundland to Alaska, on better-drained soils than black spruce. It grows 40 to 100 feet tall, with blue-green, four-sided needles that smell unpleasant when crushed and slender cones 1 to 2 inches long. It is one of the most important pulpwood trees in Canada. The Black Hills spruce, a compact form, is a popular windbreak tree.

Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea)

Balsam fir is a narrow, spire-shaped fir, 40 to 60 feet tall, with flat, soft, fragrant needles and upright cones that fall apart on the tree. Its bark has blisters full of resin, called Canada balsam. It is one of the most popular Christmas trees because of its scent, and it is often killed in huge numbers by spruce budworm outbreaks.

Jack Pine (Pinus banksiana)

Jack pine grows on dry, sandy soils across the boreal forest, where it is often the first tree after a fire. It is a small, often crooked pine, 30 to 60 feet tall, with short, stiff needles in pairs and curved cones that stay closed until the heat of a fire opens them. Young jack pine stands in Michigan are the main nesting habitat of the rare Kirtland’s warbler.

Tamarack (Larix laricina)

Tamarack, or eastern larch, is a conifer that drops its needles in fall after they turn bright gold. Its soft needles grow in tufts of 10 to 20 on short spur shoots, and its cones are tiny. It grows 40 to 80 feet tall in bogs and swamps and reaches the northern tree line, surviving winters colder than -60°F.

Common Trees of the West

Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)

Douglas fir is the most common and important timber tree in the western U.S. and one of the tallest trees in the world: coast Douglas firs can grow over 250 feet tall. It isn’t a true fir. Its cones hang down and have three-pointed bracts sticking out between the scales, which look like the back legs and tail of a mouse hiding in the cone. It is the state tree of Oregon and a popular Christmas tree.

Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa)

Ponderosa pine is the most widespread pine in the West. It grows 60 to 130 feet tall, with needles 5 to 10 inches long in bundles of two or three and thick bark in large, orange-brown plates that smell like vanilla or butterscotch on warm days. It forms open, park-like forests that historically burned every few years. It is the state tree of Montana.

Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta)

Lodgepole pine grows in dense, even-aged stands over huge areas of the Rockies and western Canada. It is a straight, slender pine, 50 to 80 feet tall, with short needles in pairs and small cones that often stay closed until fire opens them. Native peoples used the straight trunks for tipi poles and lodges. Since the late 1990s the mountain pine beetle has killed lodgepole pine on tens of millions of acres. It is the provincial tree of Alberta.

Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata)

Western red cedar is a giant of the Pacific Northwest rainforests, 150 to 200 feet tall, with drooping branches of flat, scale-like leaves and stringy, reddish bark. Its light, rot-resistant wood is used for shingles, decks and fences, and Native peoples of the coast carved canoes, houses and totem poles from it. It is the provincial tree of British Columbia.

Red Alder (Alnus rubra)

Red alder is the most common broadleaf tree in the Pacific Northwest. It grows fast to 40 to 80 feet tall, with smooth, gray to white, often lichen-spotted bark and oval, toothed leaves. It quickly fills logged and disturbed land, and bacteria in its roots add nitrogen to the soil. Its inner bark turns red when cut, giving it its name.

Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia)

Coast live oak is the most familiar oak of coastal California, an evergreen oak 30 to 80 feet tall with a broad, spreading crown and thick, twisting limbs. Its leaves are small, stiff, cupped and spiny-edged, like holly. Old trees can live 250 years or more. Many have been killed by sudden oak death, a disease first found in the 1990s near San Francisco.

Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum)

Giant sequoia isn’t common: it grows wild only in about 70 groves in California’s Sierra Nevada. But it is the largest tree on Earth by volume, up to about 300 feet tall with trunks over 30 feet across, and some trees are more than 3,000 years old. The General Sherman Tree in Sequoia National Park is the biggest. Its thick, spongy, red bark protects it from fire, and the heat of fire helps its cones release their seeds.

Most Common Trees by Region

Region	Most common trees
Northeast and Great Lakes	Red maple, sugar maple, white pine, eastern hemlock, northern red oak, American beech
Southeast	Loblolly pine, sweetgum, red maple, water oak, tulip tree, slash pine
Midwest and Plains	White oak, bur oak, eastern cottonwood, hackberry, eastern red cedar, green ash
Rocky Mountains	Lodgepole pine, ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, quaking aspen, Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir
Pacific Coast	Douglas fir, western hemlock, western red cedar, red alder, coast redwood, Sitka spruce
Southwest	Pinyon pine, Utah juniper, ponderosa pine, Gambel oak, velvet mesquite
Canada’s boreal forest	Black spruce, white spruce, balsam fir, jack pine, quaking aspen, paper birch, tamarack

For trees in a particular place, see our guides to the trees of Canada, New York, North Carolina, California and Washington.