Wood ID.... OK Vine ID

I'd say wild grape.Shreddy thin peeling bark is a good clue.It can get as thick as your forearm,climb as high as whatever its attached to & live for several decades unless cut down or uprooted.Its good for smoking,grapes are good too,though a tad sour,just takes a lot of them since they rarely get over 1/2" in size.And you gotta be quick to get them before birds & other wildlife dne thing I learned from the DNR is Vitus Riparia,like Mulberry has either male or female flowers on it.If you have a vine on your property thats 4-5 years old that you're tending it to have fruit,if none has appeared after the 3rd yr,its a male & needs a female planted next to it or a graft inserted.

Sometimes various Honeysuckle & other woody vines will have similar bark with age,havent seen any much other than Grape getting that big eventually though.

How about BTU value? Just had to cut a bunch myself, just to get it out of the way. Never occured to me to add it to the pile.

Around here I would be pretty confident that a vine of that size and appearance is wild grape of one sort of another. It definitely isn't Poison Ivy.

Grape vine, seen plenty of it here but never burned any. Let us know how it burns

While that does kind of look like a grape vine we have some kind of vine around here that is a nuisance - it grows up the sides of trees and chokes off the tree until it kills the tree (don't know the name of the vine).

I have a wonderful combination of grape, bittersweet, wisteria and poison ivy that I have to keep cutting back.
( I try to avoid the grape)
That looks most like the grape, especially the second pic where the vine isn't quite nice and round.

Bittersweet and wisteria are nasty weeds that I have no problem soaking with noxious poisons to attempt to eradicate.

grape vine

Huh . . . learned something new . . . lots of wild grapevines growing on my property . . . I have been waging war against these vines for years and have just burned them in my brush pile . . . now I can give away some to my friend who enjoys smoking meat. To smoke meat with the vines should the vines be the old, dead vines or is fresh-cut vines OK?

billb3 said:

I have a wonderful combination of grape, bittersweet, wisteria and poison ivy that I have to keep cutting back.
( I try to avoid the grape)
That looks most like the grape, especially the second pic where the vine isn't quite nice and round.

Bittersweet and wisteria are nasty weeds that I have no problem soaking with noxious poisons to attempt to eradicate.

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another aggressive vine is called trumpet creeper - where I grew up it was called cow itch - although I don't know that it actually made cows itch - maybe because it grew on fence rows and cows would itch themselves on the fence rows. At least trumpet creeper has big pretty flowers.

We have plenty of those vines here too but I've never thought about burning them.

I have plenty of poison ivy vines on my property that I thought were grape vines til i ended up with with a nasty rash and swollen, itchy body parts.

leftyscott said:

firefighterjake said:

Huh . . . learned something new . . . lots of wild grapevines growing on my property . . . I have been waging war against these vines for years and have just burned them in my brush pile . . . now I can give away some to my friend who enjoys smoking meat. To smoke meat with the vines should the vines be the old, dead vines or is fresh-cut vines OK?

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You"ll get better results with fresh cut bc more moisture = more smoke.

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Yup.Otherwise its throw a bunch of 3"-4" pieces in a 5 gallon bucket of water for a couple hrs,then take them out 30 min after the fire is lit.

leftyscott said:

firefighterjake said:

Huh . . . learned something new . . . lots of wild grapevines growing on my property . . . I have been waging war against these vines for years and have just burned them in my brush pile . . . now I can give away some to my friend who enjoys smoking meat. To smoke meat with the vines should the vines be the old, dead vines or is fresh-cut vines OK?

Click to expand...

You"ll get better results with fresh cut bc more moisture = more smoke.

Click to expand...

Hmmm . . . this could also explain why the piece of dead cherry wood that I gave my buddy to smoke up some ribs did not taste very good . . . maybe it was too dry . . .

I make trellises in my yard with three 8' long saplings, tied together with twine about a two feet from the top. Spread them like a tripod and then weave a long grapevine from the base around and around up to the top. If you run short on vine, grab another section and weave where you left off to the top. Plant climbing peas, Morning Glory or any other climber and it looks great. I may try cucumbers on one this year.

You can put bird feeders on them in the winter or hummingbird feeders in the spring.

Grape vines are great for barbecuing (especially salmon). If the vines get too dry, just soak them in water for a few hours.