A huge, fast shade tree with cream, olive and tan camouflage bark that flakes off in plates, big maple-like leaves and paired bristly seed balls that hang through winter.

A slender tree with smooth chalky-white bark marked with black scars and nearly round leaves on flattened stalks that tremble in the slightest breeze and turn brilliant gold in fall.

A single-trunked, non-suckering small tree (15-25 feet) with fragrant white blossoms in late winter before anything else is blooming, satiny blue-gray bark and tart edible plums in late summer.

A fast, narrow-crowned tree with shiny young bark marked by horizontal lenticels that matures into dark, scaly plates like burnt cornflakes.

A massive, long-lived oak that is pyramidal when young and becomes broad and rounded, often wider than tall, with light ashy-gray bark in flat plates.

A medium-large oak with a broad, rounded crown and bark that peels on young branches to show orange underneath.

A medium shade tree (usually 30-50 feet, taller on deep soil) with glossy, deeply lobed leaves that turn red in a good fall.

A massive, long-lived white oak with huge leaves, thick corky bark and golf-ball-sized acorns in fringed cups.

A stately white oak with coarsely toothed, chestnut-like leaves that turn yellow in fall.

A large, fast-growing oak with a rounded crown about as wide as tall and gray bark that develops shiny flat ridges like ski tracks.

A tall, straight red oak (50-90 feet) with deeply lobed leaves that turn scarlet in fall, more upright and faster-growing than its cousin the Texas red oak.

The classic wide, low-branching shade oak of the South, with small leathery leaves that stay on the tree all winter and drop as new leaves emerge in spring.

A deciduous conifer with soft, feathery leaves that turn rusty orange before dropping, a straight tapered trunk and, in wet ground, the famous knees.

A dense, narrow, pyramidal evergreen with flat fan-like sprays of scale leaves, tiny cones and stringy reddish bark.

A large, dense, pyramidal to oval shade tree with big heart-shaped leaves that turn pale yellow in fall and extremely fragrant creamy flowers in early summer that hum with honeybees.

A stately tree of more than 20 m with heart-shaped leaves and fragrant yellow-green July flowers that hum with bees.

A dense, graceful pyramidal evergreen with a drooping leader, pendulous branch tips, tiny flat needles with two white bands beneath and small hanging cones.

The great vase-shaped street tree of pre-1950s America, fast-growing to 60-80 feet with arching limbs and soft yellow fall color.

The toughest shade tree for Central Texas yards: an upright elm, 50-70 feet tall, with the smallest leaves of any native elm, corky-winged twigs and yellow fall color.

A fast, scrappy, vase-shaped elm with small doubly serrated leaves, early-spring flowers and papery seeds that blow everywhere and sprout in every crack.

An elm relative with the classic vase shape of the American elm, smooth gray bark that flakes to orange with age, and serrated leaves that turn yellow, orange, russet or burgundy in fall.