Anyone burn boxelder?

[baseroom]

If I find Boxelder in a scrounge......I burn it! I have found up here it can be twisted which can make for challenging splitting. That red streak in the middle sure does make it unmistakable though.

 

[MikeK]

One of my favorite trees when I was little was a Boxelder, it was a great climbing tree. I have read that you can make syrup from boxelder sap just like their maple relatives, but the sap is more dilute. I believe I read the wild critters also like their seeds.

I have some drying for likely 2016-17. The tree I have most of is Cottonwood, so the Boxelder can't be worse than that.

 

[LocustPocust]

I burn a lot of boxelder, It's all I've been burning for over a month now except for a few splits of BL and Ash. It's a great shoulder season wood. It grows around here like a weed and people avoid it like the plague, dump it etc. I think it has a bad rap because it is a fast burning wood and as one of the old timers told me a long time ago: "When it's wet It'll put a good fire out". It's a soft maple and burns fast, hot, and clean if seasoned properly. It cut easy, splits easy, and dries fast. I also burn Eastern Cottonwood but that burns much better mixed with another low quality wood like boxelder. Overall, Maples make great firewood.

Growing up in the Eastern Hardwood forests we're taught that anything but Oak, Hickory, Ash, or Sugar Maple is lousy or even dangerous firewood. I bet a lot of you can relate to this. Boxelder will put your fire out. Cottonwood is junk. Ironwood is poisonous. Elm will cause a chimney fire. Black Locust will melt your stove. Pine will cause a chimney fire. I've heard them all.

Why burn your high BTU wood when it's 50 outside? Burn "junk" and save the good stuff for 0 degree weather. It's 24 right now and that "junk" had my house 76 degrees and I had to crack a window open.

 

[Toomb]

I burn a lot of boxelder, It's all I've been burning for over a month now except for a few splits of BL and Ash. It's a great shoulder season wood. It grows around here like a weed and people avoid it like the plague, dump it etc. I think it has a bad rap because it is a fast burning wood and as one of the old timers told me a long time ago: "When it's wet It'll put a good fire out". It's a soft maple and burns fast, hot, and clean if seasoned properly. It cut easy, splits easy, and dries fast. I also burn Eastern Cottonwood but that burns much better mixed with another low quality wood like boxelder. Overall, Maples make great firewood.

Growing up in the Eastern Hardwood forests we're taught that anything but Oak, Hickory, Ash, or Sugar Maple is lousy or even dangerous firewood. I bet a lot of you can relate to this. Boxelder will put your fire out. Cottonwood is junk. Ironwood is poisonous. Elm will cause a chimney fire. Black Locust will melt your stove. Pine will cause a chimney fire. I've heard them all.

Why burn your high BTU wood when it's 50 outside? Burn "junk" and save the good stuff for 0 degree weather. It's 24 right now and that "junk" had my house 76 degrees and I had to crack a window open.

I agree with most of this.......but i am one of those that avoids box elder and cotton wood. I have burned both.....and would not say box elder splits easy. If you have a ton of it, have to get rid of it, or are desperate......burn it. But for me the effort and energy put into it is not worth it.

 

[Squisher]

Box elder, commonly referred to up here in Canada as Manitoba maple is a low heat high ash wood but will certainly burn I suppose. Where I live in BC it's considered mostly a weed tree and borderline invasive , volunteering almost wherever it can.

When I had my residential tree service I gave away lots of it under the guise of 'salmon maple'. Lol. In reference to the pinkish heartwood. Here where other species are readily available only the hardcore(or hard up) would burn it in a stove.

Some of my earliest memories are firewooding with my dad and I've burned wood my whole life. Never burnt boxelder maple in a stove. Burnt many in piles like this though: