Field Guides

A forest is a large area that is mainly covered with trees and undergrowth (shrubs that don’t grow as tall as the trees). The kind of forest that grows in an area is mainly influenced by how much rain falls in the area and how cold it gets during the winter. Michigan is a “temperate” region, an area where the average temperature changes a lot throughout the year, being cold in winter and warm in summer. Forests in temperate regions can be mainly coniferous (evergreen), mainly deciduous (trees that lose their leaves in the fall), or mixtures of both.