Tree Coloring Pages

• Broadleaf trees: oak, maple and birch, with wide flat leaves that most of them drop in fall.
• Evergreens: pines, firs and spruces, which keep their needles all year and carry their seeds in cones.
• Palm trees: no branches at all, only a single trunk topped with a crown of fronds.
• Fruit trees: apple trees dotted with fruit, and trees covered in spring blossom.
• Bare trees: a trunk and empty branches, ready for seasons projects and family trees.
• Four-season sets: one tree drawn four times, for spring, summer, fall and winter.
• Close-ups: leaves, acorns, pinecones and a stump with its rings showing.

A tree keeps a record of its own life. Each year it adds a new layer of wood under the bark. When a tree is cut, you can count those layers as rings, one for each year. Wide rings mean good growing years, and narrow rings mean dry or hard ones.

Trees fall into two big groups. Deciduous trees, such as oaks and maples, drop their leaves in autumn and grow new ones in spring. Evergreens, such as pines, keep their needles through the winter. The tallest trees on Earth are coast redwoods in California, which can top 350 feet. Some bristlecone pines in the American West are more than 4,000 years old.

For color:

• Trunks are rarely plain brown. Oak bark is gray-brown, birch is white with black marks, pine is reddish and beech is smooth gray.
• Leaves need more than one green. Use a light green where the sun hits the top of the crown and a darker green underneath.
• Autumn brings yellow, orange, red and russet, often all on one tree.
• Winter trees are bare. Color the branches dark and add blue-gray shadows on the snow.