Another day, another wood ID question...

[Hasufel]

I thought I knew the trees around me well enough to avoid the shame of posting a wood ID question, but I found something that puzzled me. This tree is about 18 inches in diameter and probably has been down for a couple of years, so I don't have any twig or leaf data. I thought it was yellow poplar (of which I have many, you can even see some seeds from another poplar in the pix below) because the wood seemed soft and the chainsaw went through it like a hot knife through butter. Also, the growth rings are huge, especially in the center. However, it's incredibly hard to split. When I finally got a few splits I found that some of the wood had a weird purplish-green color. So is it just a yellow poplar that seems unusual because it's very mature, or could it be some other species? The photos below show the tree, the bark, a cross-section, and a purplish-green split (sitting on top of some red oak for comparison). Any thoughts?

 

[NordicSplitter]

The bark looks like the tree in my front yard....Basswood Tree. It's identical...

 

[CincyBurner]

Yeah, I think you called it - tulip-poplar. Check pic 3 and esp. last pic - green, grey mauves wood colors.
Also . . . in pic 2, there are a couple tulip-poplar seeds stuck in the bark (not that that is definitive b/c they could've blown in from neighboring tree).
I've never found it it difficult to split, but sometimes it has a tendency to not split cleanly/ evenly.

 

[chopp056]

looks like tulip poplar.
Here is a bunch i have waiting to split


Also I have no shame asking what trees are what. Im proud of myself for actually learning rather then just cutting splitting and burning it. The extent of my tree knowledge was me asking grandpa what kind of wood is this and always got the response "I don't know, burns don't it"

 

[Paulywalnut]

I agree with tulip poplar. It does chainsaw nice, but it can even be tough splitting with a fiskers

 

[Wood Duck]

It looks like Basswood to me. I think the purplish color of the wood is due to rot, and the wood when fresh was white. The third picture shows the wood is pretty punky. Basswood is uncommon in my area and maybe yours too, so you might not be familiar with it.

 

[Hasufel]

Thanks very much for the inputs so far. I'm going to try doing some bark comparison with nearby trees when I get more daylight. Poplar is common here, basswood isn't but I can't rule it out (I'm right on the edge of the natural range for basswood, according to the maps I've seen). Pic #3 makes it look punky but it actually isn't; the dark crack running from about 3:30 to 6:30 is where the trunk split and started to rot but that affected only a thin layer. The other colored areas (except maybe for the one at 3:00) are still sound and, in fact, may be the toughest part of the wood. I don't remember the other tulip poplars I've split being this tough but I don't think any were as big as this.

 

[Hasufel]

I have no shame asking what trees are what.

Well I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek on that part. I've tried to build good tree identification skills since I was a kid many years ago and I keep several field guides but I always do better when I have leaves to compare. For some reason I never had much luck with bark alone, maybe because the field guide pictures never seemed to match up well with reality. It also doesn't help when you get a lot of variation between different parts of the same tree, which seems to happen a lot around here.

 

[TedyOH]

I don't remember the other tulip poplars I've split being this tough

I find that the standing dead silver maple I cut a lot of is harder, much harder, to split than green wood, any green wood - this may be your case as well. I'd say it's TP / YP as well.

 

[Hasufel]

OK, I was able to look around some more and I'm pretty certain it's tulip poplar. I found some other trees with nearly identical bark and they all have remnants of seed pod husks (I think that's what they are) in their crowns, which is characteristic of live tulip poplars at this time of the year. I guess the wood threw me off because it had been down for a while. I just hope the rest of it isn't as hard to split as the first chunk I tried, otherwise I may have to leave most of it to the beetles. At least it's a reminder of why I like oak so much! Thanks to all of you for weighing in...