Yet another tree ID...

The handyman I occasionally buy assorted wood from dropped off a pile of this today. Insists it's hickory. I don't believe him.

Good news is it splits if I so much as say the word "maul" within 5 yards of it.

'Twood be easier to id it with pics.


Matt

Fixed it... pics didn't wanna upload & had to resize.

He's right...that is hickory.

The smooth bark fooled me- I thought hickory bark was shaggy?

Looks like one of the soft maples to me. Hickory around here would have much deeper furrows in bark at that size.

If it is a maple, my guess would be Norway. The second & third pictures aren't much help.
Hickory takes a while to get the cracks in the bark. Dug a young one from my uncles farm & planted
It at my parents place 20 years ago. Still hasn't developed the cracks in the bark yet. Bark from the
Tree looks like the first picture. Shagbark hickory has the real curly bark when it matures.
The more I look at it, I kind of want to say Norway Maple...tough call!

Pignut would be my guess too.

Bitternut/pignut hickory.....my final answer!

Cut some young down hickory today and that's what the bark looks like higher up on the tree... Mine was shagbark.

Looks like hickory to me. Not the shagbark that I have, so must be pignut or Bitternut, or whatever the other guys are telling you. If it's hickory it should be pretty heavy, even in a hand sized split.

I also would've assumed hickory would be a lot harder to split? I just tap this with the maul and POW.

Mine usually splits pretty easy. On the electric splitter it's strange, there with be a fraction of a second when it will strain and then POW, it all breaks free at once and shoots the pieces out several feet.

Sometimes I'll have some that is just extraordinarily stringy, kinda like elm, it it just pulls apart, or I take another whack at the strings with the maul or fiskars.

Looks just like the pignut hickories I have in my yard.

Trunk is stringy and the limbs are cake.

Hickory! No doubts here.

The bark is indeed shaggy.....but only on the shagbark hickory and not the pignut.

Sure looks like the branches of the shagbark I got. The trunk will have shaggy bark. The branches were smooth like that.

Mine - however is a BEAR to split.

How's it smell? Hickory will smell like ...... hickory.

Yeah, you are right on the branches being smooth. I guess I forgot that these were all delivered, so we don't know if he has a thin trunk or the tops...