Poplar?

[DoubleB]

Somehow I've never run across poplar yet. Is that what I got in this morning's scrounge?



I'll take it, but it wasn't as fun as I hoped. Splitting was a mess, smell was awful, and BTU charts suggest I'd be better off with spruce or pine--and those aromas are far better.

 

[woodhog73]

That looks like birch to me with the white bark. I'm fairly sure you scored birch.

Birch is pretty decent firewood not as good as oak but not bad either.

Also I burn poplar. It's not the best but when dry it's good for shoulder season

 

[DoubleB]

That looks like birch to me

Thanks for your reply. I hope you're right since that's more BTUs. I just didn't think it was birch because I thought birch bark is peely, but this stuff isn't peely at all.

 

[JA600L]

This is a picture off the internet of a white birch leaf. Does it match the ones I see in your one picture?

 

[brenndatomu]

Hey Bud!
Yeah, looks like some flavor of birch...the bark will get more peely as it drys. Some types of birch trees are more peely than others. Good on ya for gettin it split ASAP, that stuff will go straight to punk in no time if left in the round, especially if not stacked and kept dry.
Funny, I don't remember any that was stinky or messy...

 

[Hogwildz]

Get it split, it likes to hold water for a while in round form

 

[fespo]

Poplar, it's gopher wood. Put one in and go for another

 

[PA. Woodsman]

That's not White Birch it's Aspen. Not as good as Birch, more closer to Poplar as far as heat value.

 

[firefighterjake]

Definitely poplar/aspen . . . based on the bark and leaf seen in the first pic. Also if you rub the bark with your hand you may feel and look as if you have talcum powder on your hand . . . scratch the bark a bit and right underneath it may be shiny green.

Poplar is one of those woods that I will not cut generally unless it's in my way . . . it is a "soft hardwood" . . . not a very good tree in terms of BTUs. Better use is for campfires and the Shoulder Season burning.

 

[Lcback]

That's not any poplar I have seen. We have tulip poplar everywhere around here.

Sent from my LG-D850 using Tapatalk

 

[sportbikerider78]

That is poplar. We have trees just like that all over my property up north. It does not peel like birch at all..as you can see from the pics.

The branches also take weird random directions.

It can splash back in your face when splitting but it dries really quickly. I use it to heat my camp and as campfire wood. We have a small woodstove...it is easy to split and cut...so its good for that. You can make a hot fire with it. Good for shoulder season as others mentioned.

 

[rygar]

that doesnt look like the tulip poplar i got for free and CSS. dont know the poplar, great for shoulder season and for starting hot fires.

yes i have poplar.

 

[billb3]

looks like poplar
maybe populus grandidentata
Got a few bigtooth aspen here that are getting old and sending up root suckers ( some continually coming up in my garden ) as they are want to do when they get aged.
The wood side of the bark stinks when you peel it off.
The leaves "quake" like aspen.

The tree I cut down (dying and dropping branches ) took much longer than a year to dry out and was pretty crappy firewood as far as producing heat. Got rid of the 1/2+ cord last November.

 

[bfast250]

Tulip Poplar is not the same as Poplar (different species/genus). What you posted is definitely not Tulip Poplar.

 

[begreen]

Looks a bit like aspen to me which is sometimes called poplar in some areas, though out here the poplar is a different tree with a different growth habit entirely. There are big tooth and quaking aspens. Here is the leaf for quaking aspen.


bark

 

[CincyBurner]

Populus

 

[begreen]

Looks like the populus family is large. It includes cottonwood, poplar and aspen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populus

 

[DoubleB]

Thanks all for your feedback. I'm thinking it's not birch. I didn't mention but the leaves are on the blue/gray side of green. Also, I had to bust off a couple branches to get the limbs in the truck, and the the branches snapped off noticeably easy, which reminded me of a low-density wood.

After looking some more, what I got looks just like this silver poplar:
https://austinbotany.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/populus-alba-white-poplar-silver-poplar/

Part of my confusion is probably that there seem to be so many poplar/aspen/cottonwood types out there.

Thanks all!

 

[begreen]

Nice, good match.

 

[BenTN]

Tulip Poplar is not the same as Poplar (different species/genus). What you posted is definitely not Tulip Poplar.

Tulip poplar is actually of the "magnolia" family.

This appears to be as others have said, aspen or popple of the true poplar family

 

[CincyBurner]

That's sounds right, especially if tree not from woods. P. alba, an exotic from Europe, is sometimes used in landscapes.
Take a look at the bottom leaf. It has distinctive, white, very tomentose (fuzzy) underside.

 

[Longstreet]

Tulip poplar is actually of the "magnolia" family.

This appears to be as others have said, aspen or popple of the true poplar family

It's a shame I can only like this post one time. The confusion in this thread is due to different regions not following the same standards and only using common names. Tulip Poplar has nothing to do with real poplars. Meanwhile, Aspen is 100% poplar, yet few people know it.

It's similar with hickory, pecan, and black walnut. I love when people say pecan burns like hickory. That's like saying red oak burns like red oak. Hickory and pecan are the same tree! Black walnut are only one circle removed - in the same subfamily, they are essentially the same thing as hickory!

Anyways, poplar can make great firewood. If you had a small wood lot relative to your needs, poplar would be the ideal tree to grow. Not for it's btus per cord, but for it's efficiency in producing btus per acre.

 

[Jeffm1]

Somehow I've never run across poplar yet. Is that what I got in this morning's scrounge?

View attachment 182829 View attachment 182830

I'll take it, but it wasn't as fun as I hoped. Splitting was a mess, smell was awful, and BTU charts suggest I'd be better off with spruce or pine--and those aromas are far better.

I thought it was quaking aspen at first looking at the bark but then I enlarged one pic to look closer at the leaves. Aspen leaves have smoother edges. Its not aspen. But the leaves look like some type of birch. White birch (also called paper birch) would have the peely bark you mentioned, but there are plenty of other birches it could be. Birch that I cut last year did have bit of a funky odor. Not too bad, but not attractive to the nose. I like having a smorgasbord of different woods to burn for different times of year and burn times. I don't always want a 10 hour fire that will cook me out of the house. So even if it were aspen I'd take it for fall and spring.

Aspen leaf:
http://www.treebrowser.org/assets/images/trees/lgimg/Populus_tremuloidesRL001USU8-29-13.jpg

Birch leaf:
http://www.bio.brandeis.edu/fieldbio/Survival/Images/Birch/birch leaf - ed.jpg

 

[begreen]

I burned poplar for the first time a year back and to my surprise I liked it. It's not a massive heat producer but quite an acceptable wood for shoulder season burning.

 

[iamlucky13]

That's not any poplar I have seen. We have tulip poplar everywhere around here.

Tulip poplar is actually more closely related to magnolias than true poplars. I don't know the history of how the names got conflated, but I gather that tulip poplar is a slightly better firewood than true poplars. The most notable difference is the much more distinct flowers on tulip poplars.

Aspen are a member of the poplar family.

This isn't the only case of naming confusion in the tree world - taxonomy is an inexact science. Douglas firs aren't a member of the fir genus, but were called firs by early explorers. Even the botanists were confused and originally classified them as hemlocks, before deciding they were distinct enough to merit their own genus.