Burning cherry laurel

[colsmith]

Hello, does anybody out there have experience with burning cherry laurel? My sister has cut down several of her trees, and I could schlepp some of the wood home with me if I like. Her boyfriend helpfully even split some of it. However, doing a lot of googling I cannot find ANYTHING about burning cherry laurel, except that as a landscape plant it has a 'high flammability" rating. Lots of recipes for using its leaves and weird stuff like that. So, I would like to know if I should take a little or take a lot, as it is a long drive home from here and having the truck empty or full would probably affect the mileage. Seems odd I can't ANYTHING about burning it. Seems fairly heavy in its green state, and have read that it is hard and durable for making furniture. Thanks for any useful input.

 

[Andre B.]

Seems fairly heavy in its green state, and have read that it is hard and durable for making furniture.

Burn it.

 

[hilly]

All I have to burn is softwood. I even have a big pile of cedar (think pine, but about half the mass) that came down this winter that I will burn next winter. It's not the longest lasting wood, but it burns and it burns well. I would give my left ... pinky... to burn hard wood. Take Andre's advice: Burn it!

 

[restorer]

Check this out:

http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/l/lauche11.html

I have heard of this laurel, but with a caution. May want to call your extension service to see if they have any data. If nothing more, you'd have a nice smelling smoke.

 

[colsmith]

The wood itself smells fabulous. Sort of like cherries, which might be how it got the name, since the fruit isn't much like cherries at all, in fact is slightly toxic, as are the leaves. We also have some sycamore we could drag home. Hubby pointed out that the fact that the sycamore wood that fell into her pool sank to the bottom is a good sign of how dense it is, since wood usually floats. Or maybe that is dry wood floats, but I know in the olden days they used to float logs down the river to the mill, so I assume green wood normally floats. I do see by googling that sycamore is hard to split, but could take smaller rounds, they haven't tackled the trunk yet anyway. The cherry laurel I can't find data on, but some was split by hand when I wasn't here. Since it wasn't wood her boyfriend even wanted, I assume it wasn't too hard to split, as otherwise why would he even do it?