Tulip poplar

Not great but still a medium wood I think 16 million btu per cord. If you need wood grab it but I would not go to strong otherwise.

ford88 said:

I can get a bunch for free but its big and will take a lot of work,is it worth it? how good is it to burn.

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Depends on the need. I look down 10 or 12 of them two years ago and burned it all last year in my boiler. It dries super fast so you could use it sooner than later. It processes easy as well. I went through 10 cord of it last year and have another 12 ready to go this year. I have been aquiring maple, ash and oak lately and will let that season, but the tulip does burn.

If you need dry wood quickly get it. 1 year should season it pretty good. If not leave it.

Not a lot of heat but really easy to split. Dries fast, as others have said, good for shoulder season (fall and spring). Not so good for middle of winter. I have burned it in the past and it goes pretty quick! If you have the space and time to process it go for it!

Welcome to the forum ford88.

What concerns me is that you state that it will take a lot of work. It depends upon what that is whether it will be worth it or not. For sure when you are cutting the larger trees, the wood cutting goes much faster. Of course that means more splitting but that should not be a problem. So, how far would you have to haul this wood?

I am two years or more ahead, but I'd definitely take it. I take anything decent that is easy and free. Why not?

If its free its me .. unless your 4-5 years ahead then you can pick and choose. But it does put out some quick heat if you need it. As Other's have stated it does dry fast and splits easy.

There was a house that was selling here and the owner wanted to get rid of furniture and the wood. I had to snow blow down a long driveway to get to the garage but inside was a cord and a half of Lodgepole pine and about 30 rounds of (Aspen) Poplar, all of which had been sitting for 6 years. Im not sure how different it is from tulip poplar. I had never burned it before and was interested in seeing how it performed. I found that it burned quicker than the Lodgepole pine and left a boat load of ash in the firebox but I was able to get the stove top easily over 615 F. There is lots of it around here that just rots in the bush but being tight on space I prefer to go for Larch and then Lodgepole. If I had easy access to it and didn't have better btu wood I would burn it for sure.

BrotherBart said:

Tulip isn't actually Poplar but shares characteristics. The ash from it is light, fluffy and a lot. Lay a stove shovel on it and it disappears to nothing.

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So is it a lower btu wood than Poplar?

BrotherBart said:

Probably. Dried for a year or more it is pretty damn good firewood burned in large splits.

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Good to know. Thanks. Sitting by the fire. Forecast is for the first day of snow tomorrow....

Split it big! Good shoulder season wood and splits very easy

as i understand it (and i may not be understanding) what is referred to in my area as tulip poplar is part of the magnolia family which is better wood than tulip tree, poplar, popple, popular, aspen of other areas of the country more like willow and not very good firewood. i have not burned any yet and just started processing some of the trees on my property. not very dense stuff, does cut and split easy. i will say that my bees love the nectar flow of these trees in the spring. perhaps somebody can clarify this better...

Coal Reaper has it right, mostly. Tulip is "Liriodendron tulipifera" as opposed to the "populus" (poplar) family. It shares some characteristics, including low BTUs.

That said, I believe it's higher BTU than the real poplars. Maybe not by much, but it's listed higher on most of the BTU charts I've seen linked around here. Don't get me wrong, you won't mistake it for oak when it's in the stove. As others have stated, it'll season quick, it'll burn, and if you need wood, free is hard to beat.

It grows (and falls down) all over the place here, so I always have some Tulip stacks. You may find that it's great when you have space and need wood, and becomes much less appealing as you stock up with better species.

I have a lot of tulip poplar because a massive tree fell across my yard last year. After a year of drying it burns pretty well, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it. It's nice for starting a fire but it's just not up to the task of heating a house in cold climate like yours.

It makes better lumber than firewood, beautiful colors, white to yellow with a brown to purple heart and it's very stable.
But for free......decent f/w.

I got a freebie tulip poplar 5 years back. Not the greatest wood, but I couldn't pass up free. Split pretty easy and dried quick. It was good for the shoulder season.

On the East Coast, Yellow (Tulip) Poplar is plentiful. My approach is to make more effort to get Oak, Cherry, and others, but to make at least some room for Poplar. Has two thirds the BTU's of Oak, nothing to scoff at. It is a good idea to burn it in combination with Oak or some other wood that coals well, because Tulip coals lousy. With Oak in the mix, restarts are no problem, however. It seasons in a year, but if you have the time, two years is always better. Makes a lot of light fluffy ash, but mash it down with a shovel and load some more wood on top. It makes no more ash than any other wood (by weight). I like it, burn it all the time.

Yellow Poplar is what the Tulip Poplar goes by here. It is very light wood compared to Oak, or Hickory. Like others have said, it drys fine and splits like a dream. My 7 year old can split medium sized rounds by hand with the Fiskars. The main use that we get out of it is when starting the boiler up. I use it similar to dry Pine, for the initial light up. It catches up nicely. Not as nice as Red Cedar, but still nice. Yellow Poplar is pretty plentiful here, so I won't go anywhere to get it, but if one falls on the place I'll process it.


http://www.dof.virginia.gov/trees/identify/poplar-yellow.htm

I looked up the BTU charts. I found 16.0 MBTU/cord as well. Yellow poplar. That puts it in the same ballpark as silver maple. But its starting to get down into the pine- conifer range.
Still quite a way above the Aspens and Cottonwoods.
Im on the northern edge of its range. It doesnt grow here. For trees of that size, on my property I have Eastern White pine. White pines are my monster trees.
Tulip is supposed to be the largest hardwood tree in America. With the most widely used timber. A timber industry tree.
Im taking a wild stab here and guess that what you see at sawmills as "poplar" is this tree. As I dont imagine Cottonwoods or any in the Aspens group is commercially harvested as lumber.
Although I buy excelsior which is Aspen.

There is a tree farm in Oregon which is experimenting with genetics of Aspen because of its rapid growth. They are altering the trees to produce either more cellulose for pulpwood or more lignun for structural wood.
Also using these trees because of their habit of cloneing or root suckering. (DNA studies)

And the tree farm has absolutely nothing to do with Tulip poplar. Sorry.
I dont know the history of why Tulip poplar got stuck with its name. Its not related to poplars whatsoever.
Backwoods vernacular that stuck...most likely.