Equally, a core sample which cannot be related to its context (where it was before it became a core sample) has lost much of its benefit. The identification of the borehole, and the position and orientation ("way up") of the core in the borehole is critical, even if the borehole is in a tree trunk – dendrochronologists always try to include a bark surface in their samples so that the date of most-recent growth of the tree can be unambiguously determined.