50 Fun Facts About Deciduous Forest

Doctors use the word deciduous for which part of a child's body that also drops out on schedule?

Baby teeth are formally called deciduous teeth because they are shed like autumn leaves, and antlers that drop every year earn the same label.

Which sweet product, most of it made in Quebec, starts as watery sap tapped from forest trees in late winter?

Maple syrup is boiled down from sap that is only two to five per cent sugar, a craft first practised by the Indigenous peoples of northeastern North America.

Which North American amphibian survives winter frozen solid, its heartbeat stopped until the spring thaw?

Wood frogs can survive up to 70% of their body water turning to ice, because glucose and urea in their tissues work as a natural antifreeze.

Which insects put on a synchronised mating display each year in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, viewed by lottery?

Fireflies of the species Photinus carolinus flash together and then go dark together, and so many people want to watch that the park hands out parking passes by draw.

Which noisy insects of eastern US forests spend 13 or 17 years underground before emerging together in vast swarms?

Cicadas of the periodical kind pass about 99.5% of their lives below ground sipping fluid from tree roots, and their prime-numbered cycles may help them dodge predators.

Which pigment makes summer leaves green, then breaks down in autumn to unmask the yellows hidden beneath?

Chlorophyll takes its name from the Greek for pale green leaf, and a tree dismantles it in autumn to pull the nutrients it invested back out of its leaves.

Which legendary outlaw's forest in Nottinghamshire holds one of Europe's great gatherings of ancient trees?

Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest reserve has more than a thousand trees over 500 years old, and legend says one giant among them hid the outlaw and his men from the Sheriff.

Which animal of eastern woodlands, the world's northernmost marsupial, famously fakes its own death when cornered?

Opossum newborns climb into their mother's pouch for about ten weeks, and the adult's limp, open-mouthed act gave English the phrase playing possum.

Which organisms link tree roots in vast underground networks that scientists have nicknamed the wood wide web?

Fungi feed trees scarce nitrogen and phosphorus from the soil, and in return a tree may hand over up to 30% of the carbon it captures from the air.

Keeping broad leaves through a frozen winter would threaten a tree with which problem?

Drying out is the danger because cold winter days leave little liquid water for roots to draw on, so a bare tree stops losing moisture it cannot replace.

Which forest layer soaks up most summer sunlight, forcing woodland wildflowers to bloom before it fills in each spring?

Canopy shade changes the weather underneath too: in summer a deciduous forest runs about 2 degrees Celsius cooler than the land around it.

Which six-state region of the United States draws crowds of tourists nicknamed leaf peepers every autumn?

New England puts on an unusually red show: up to 70% of the tree species in its north can make red pigment, against about 10% across temperate regions.

In which country is travelling to admire autumn leaves a custom called momijigari, practised since the Heian period?

Japan's word for the outing means hunting autumn leaves, and by the 18th century the pastime had become widely popular across the country.

Which winter survival strategy slows a woodchuck's heart to as few as four beats a minute?

Hibernation in the full sense is rarer than it looks: woodchucks are among the few animals that truly do it, and they often dig a separate winter burrow for the purpose.

Which forest birds have a tongue bone so long that it winds around the outside of the skull?

Woodpeckers have a skull of strong but spongy bone, and studies of how they drum have inspired designs for protective helmets and aircraft black boxes.

Which tree, once common from Maine to Mississippi, lost three to four billion trunks to an imported blight after 1904?

American chestnut roots still send up new shoots today, but the blight strikes them down again before they are more than about 6 metres tall.

Which bird, once North America's most abundant, fed on forest nuts in flocks of billions before dying out in 1914?

Passenger pigeon flocks could take 14 hours to pass overhead, yet hunting and forest clearance wiped the species out; the last bird, Martha, died in a Cincinnati zoo.

Which nimble-fingered woodland mammal has a scientific name, lotor, that is Latin for washer?

Raccoon food-washing has never been observed in the wild: captive animals dunk their meals, probably echoing how wild ones feel for prey along the water's edge.

Which tree's thin white bark peels off in papery sheets and was used by Indigenous peoples to build lightweight canoes?

Birch bark is light, flexible and waterproof, and the trees themselves are pioneers, quick to colonise open ground after a fire or other disturbance.

Which pigment family, also responsible for the colour of egg yolks, canaries and daffodils, turns autumn leaves yellow?

Carotenoids are present in the leaf all year but stay masked by green until autumn, and the same family colours carrots, corn and pumpkins.

Which autumn weather pattern usually brings the most brilliant leaf colours, especially the reds made from leaf sugars?

Sunny days, chilly nights work because bright light pushes leaves to make more red anthocyanin, as long as the cold stops short of a freeze.

Where does a deciduous tree keep next spring's leaves all winter, folded in miniature under protective scales?

In its buds, which form at the end of one growing season and rest until the next; the scars their scales leave behind let you count a twig's age.

Which feature inside a tree trunk, laid down once a year by the changing seasons, lets scientists read a tree's age?

Growth rings are wide after a wet year with a long growing season and very narrow after a drought, so a trunk also keeps a diary of past weather.

Which timber term covers the wood of every broadleaf flowering tree, including the famously soft and light balsa?

Hardwood is a botanical label rather than a measure of toughness: balsa counts because its tree flowers, while the needle-leaved yew gives a hard softwood.

Which tree, host to more than 950 kinds of caterpillar, is the national tree of the United States, Germany and Poland?

Oak leaves feed so many caterpillars that the trees are a vital larder for nesting birds, and the genus runs to some 500 species around the world.

Which heavy game bird of American woodlands, down to about 30,000 by the late 1930s, flies up into trees to sleep?

Wild turkey eyesight is poor after dark, so flocks roost high in the branches at twilight, and reintroduction has since rebuilt their numbers into the millions.

Which animals are so varied in Great Smoky Mountains National Park that it is nicknamed their world capital?

Salamanders of up to 31 species, from five of the world's nine families, live in the park, drawn by cool, damp woods that keep their permeable skin moist.

Which soil animals, scoured from northern North America by ice sheets, are now invaders stripping its forest floors?

Earthworms came back in the soil around European settlers' plants and as fishing bait, and they devour the deep layer of decaying leaves that native plants rely on.

Which asset of deciduous forests tempted farmers to clear so many of them for crops?

Rich soil made these forests prime targets for the plough, which is why many of the deciduous woods standing today are second growth on once-cleared land.

Which mountain chain, running from Alabama to Newfoundland, holds one of the most diverse temperate forests on Earth?

The Appalachians hold forests that the ice sheets never reached, a refuge where as many as 30 kinds of tree can grow at a single site.

Which animal, Europe's heaviest wild land mammal, was hunted out of the wild by 1927 but roams Białowieża Forest again?

European bison were bred back from animals kept in captivity and released from 1951 onward, and hundreds now roam this primeval woodland on the Polish border.

Which spring wildflower, protected under UK law, is used as a sign that a British wood is truly ancient?

Bluebells flower and leaf early, before the branches overhead close in late spring, and their young shoots can push up through a thick layer of dead leaves.

Which prized Asian timber tree, used for ship decks, drops its huge papery leaves to save water in the rainless months?

Teak grows in tropical forests that stay warm all year, so its leaves are shed for a rainless stretch of three to five months, not for a cold winter.

Larches and bald cypresses are rare leaf-dropping members of which mostly evergreen group of trees?

Conifers nearly all keep their needles through winter, but larches go bare each autumn, and the swamp-dwelling bald cypress adds woody knees that rise around its trunk.

Which nut-burying rodent from eastern North America has displaced its red cousin across most of Britain?

Gray squirrels each bury several thousand small food caches in a season, then find them again with an accurate memory for nearby and distant landmarks.

Which crested songbird of eastern North American woods mimics the screams of hawks and hides acorns to eat later?

Blue jay hawk impressions may be a way of testing whether a real raptor is nearby, or a trick to scare other birds away from food.

Which tick-borne illness takes its name from a Connecticut town where a puzzling cluster of cases appeared in 1975?

Lyme disease is tied to the state of the woods: white-footed mice, key carriers of the bacteria, thrive where forest is cut into small patches with few predators.

Which night-flying animals of eastern North America have died in their millions from white-nose syndrome?

Bats lose their resistance to the disease once they shut down for the cold months, and the die-off has left many tons of insects uneaten each year.

Which term for a tree shedding its leaves in autumn is also used by zoologists for a lizard dropping its tail?

Abscission comes from Latin words meaning to cut away, and a tree prepares for it by sealing the join with a waterproof layer of cork before the leaf lets go.

Which invasive beetle from Asia, first identified in Michigan in 2002, has killed tens of millions of trees?

Emerald ash borer numbers stay low in its homeland, where it does little damage, but North America's native predators and parasites cannot keep it in check.

Which stately shade tree lost more than 25 million specimens in the United Kingdom alone to a beetle-borne disease?

Elm losses came from Dutch elm disease, which is thought to have started in Asia; the name honours the Dutch scientists who pinned down its cause in the 1920s.

Which old woodland craft leaves living stumps called stools, some 5.5 metres across after centuries of repeated cutting?

Coppicing means felling a tree to its base so that it sprouts a cluster of fresh shoots, a harvest that can be taken again and again from the same roots.

Which tree forms Pando, a Utah grove whose 47,000 trunks are really one organism joined by a single root system?

Quaking aspen stems in Pando die one at a time and are replaced by identical shoots from the roots, and at about 6,000 tonnes the grove is often called the heaviest living thing.

Which tree with smooth silver-grey bark bears edible nuts called mast and often keeps its dead leaves all winter?

Beech nuts were rated the sweetest of all by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who told of a besieged city whose people lived entirely on them.

Which prized delicacy grows underground on the roots of broadleaf trees and was traditionally sniffed out by pigs?

Truffles are now mostly hunted with dogs, which find them just as well but have no great urge to eat the prize; Italy has banned the use of pigs since 1985.

Which woodland plant, really a member of the cashew family, gives most people who touch it an itchy rash?

Poison ivy is not a true ivy, and while its oil torments people, birds eat its whitish fruits through the winter and spread the seeds.

Which layer of a woodland floor, thin in tropical rainforests because it rots so fast, do ovenbirds need for nesting?

Leaf litter holds moisture in the ground and hands nutrients back to the trees as it rots, and it hides the small animals that shelter beneath it.

Which white spring wildflower of North American woods, Ontario's floral emblem, relies on ants to carry off its seeds?

Trillium is a slow starter: in the wild a plant typically needs seven to ten years of growth before it is big enough to produce its first flower.

Which tree of eastern North American woods, once the key flavouring of root beer, grows three leaf shapes on one plant?

Sassafras oil was banned from mass-produced food and drink in the United States in 1960, after laboratory studies linked its main component to cancer.

Which magnolia relative, state tree of Kentucky and Tennessee, is the tallest tree of North America's deciduous forest?

Tuliptree specimens have been measured at 58.5 metres, and the tallest known individual grows at a secret location in the Great Smoky Mountains.