Identifying Your Evergreen Shrub by the Leaves

Juniper Bush

Evergreen shrubs can be used as an anchor, screen, or focal point in a mixed border or landscape. Learning how to identify your evergreen shrub is the first step in making sure it’s the right one for the growing conditions.

There are three fundamental kinds of evergreen shrub leaves: scale-like, awl-shaped, and needle-like. After you identify the right leaf-shape category of your evergreen shrub, you can narrow down the evergreen shrub types.

Customary types of evergreen shrubs are yews, firs, junipers, Siberian cypress, hemlock, Douglas fir, spruce, false cypress, pine, and arborvitae. When distinguishing evergreen shrub leaves, you can match the leaves with pictures in tree care and stump removal guidebook.

Decide the Right Leaf-Shape

Step 1
Distinguish awl-shaped evergreen leaves by their thin, long formation. Scale- and needle-shaped leaves are more significant than awl-shaped leaves and reach outward from the center stems.

Step 2
Search for evergreen shrub leaves with a host of needles that flourish uniformly from the center leaf stem. These are referred to as needle evergreen leaves.

Step 3
Pinpoint the evergreen shrub leaves by its scales that develop away from the center leaf stem in uneven lengths. Scale-like evergreen leaves possess a coarse triangular shape.

Classify the Evergreen Shrub

Step 1
Feel the foliage to characterize the right type of evergreen with awl-like leaves. If the foliage is piercing to the touch, it’s a juniper. If the foliage is flexible and soft, it’s a Siberian cypress.

Step 2
Examine the needles’ length, growth habit, and coloring to detect the needle-leaf evergreen shrub type. If the needles are entirely green, flat, and ¾- to 1-inch long, the shrub is a yew. If the needle possesses two white bands down the length of its bottom, is around ½-inch and is united to the branch by a tiny stem, it's hemlock. Pinpoint pines by needles that grow in bundles of two, three, or five and spruces based on their square needles.

Step 3
Look at the specific shape and size of scale-like leaves to identify the evergreen shrub type. Arborvitae shrubs have flat fan-shaped and tiny leaves that grow to only 1/16 to 1/8 inch in size. Imitation cypress types have less flat and bigger scale-like leaves.​

If you need help identifying trees and shrubs in your landscaping or need stump services, contact a local professional stump removal service today!

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