A Tale of Two Trees

Confession time.  After the children correctly identified those bright green spiky balls as fruits of the Sweet Gum Tree, this was my Story of the Day.

A little background: When I presented the children with the mystery spiky green balls, the children began to make connections to their own experiences.  K____ said she had seen them at her grandmother's house under a tree, only they were bigger and brown.  "We pick them up and throw them in the lake," she said, struggling to remember the name of the tree.  "A gum tree?"  C_____ said she had seen them on the way home from school.  A few children quickly consulted field guides, and, along with drawing upon their own experiences, began to draw conclusions.   "Oh, I know!  It's a Sweet Gum!" 

I pushed them to think about the evidence they would need to be sure that their hypothesis was correct.  They asked me wonderful questions about my find.  "Where did you find those balls?  Were they still attached to the plant or on the ground?"  "Were they under a tree?"  "What is the shape of the leaf?"  "How big can the balls get?"  "Do they hang from a leaf or on a branch?  Or is it the leaf?"   "How many of those can grow on a tree?"  "Do they grow out of the ground near the tree?"  "Did you find them here at school?"    And finally, "Will you bring us some leaves from the tree where you found the balls?"

I promised I would and then dutifully pulled some leaves from the tree on the return portion of my walking route.  I tucked them into the pocket of my teacher bag and brought them to school the next day, but testing intervened and I didn't have an opportunity to show them to the children.  That evening I was sitting on a friend's back deck, gazing up at her tree--a Sweet Gum, a tree with those very same bright green spiky balls hanging from the branches.  Hmm.  All of the leaves I pulled from the tree on my walking path had only three lobes, but every leaf on my friend's Sweet Gum had five lobes.  Weird!

On my next walk, I looked more carefully.  Yep.  Those spiky balls, both green and brown, are definitely Sweet Gum fruits . . . but are there any attached to the tree with the three-lobed leaves?  Nope!  After standing there, hands on hips, staring up at that tree (looking--to anyone peeking fearfully from behind his/her curtains--for all the world like a person who has completely lost her marbles), I realized there is a second, much taller tree towering over the tree from which I took the sample three-lobed leaves.  And all of the leaves on the taller tree have the characteristic five lobes of a Sweet Gum!  Gravity being what it is, those spiky balls had fallen from higher than I gave them credit.  Lessons of the day: Be sure of your evidence.  Look carefully.  Don't jump to conclusions.  Admit when you've made a mistake.