Let's play another round of the Wood ID Game!
- Thread starter brooktrout
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Maybe honey locust? Any bark shots from larger pieces? Should be a little shaggy, like red/silver maple.
If you scrape a little bit of the bark off but not all the way to the sap wood does it appear orange?.
Look like stag horn sumac to me too...the kind that results in those conical red fuzzy fruit. Although I've never seem 'em get to a 6" diameter like the last pic.
Tag Alder. Unless after handling the cut or split pieces of wood your hands become sticky, In that case I lean towards sumac. Even though it looks like a rather large version of either. I ask about the orange color when scraped because the deer around here love to make buck rubs on the tag alders and it leaves nice bright orange sign posts.
Did you cut it yourself? Where was it growing? The Alder I'm familiar with we always called swamp Alder and its pretty much a marsh loving plant. Check out this Wikipedia paragraph(s). "Alder is a preferred wood for charcoal making, formerly used in the manufacture of gunpowder, or for smelting metal ores, now used primarily for cooking. The wood is also traditionally used for smoking fish and meat, though this usage has often been replaced by other woods such as oak and hickory.
Alder bark (Alnus glutinosa) with characteristic lenticels and abnormal lenticels on callused areas.An exception is the smoked Pacific salmon industry in the Pacific Northwest, where alder smoking is essentially universal. This is partly due to indigenous traditions of food preservation in the area, and partly because oak, hickory, mesquite and other woods favored for smoking elsewhere are not locally available in any large quantities. Species used for Pacific salmon smoking are Red alder A. rubra and to a lesser extent Sitka alder A. viridis ssp. sinuata.
Alder is popular as a material for electric guitar bodies. It is used by many guitar makers, notably the Fender Guitar Company, who use it on top quality instruments such as the Stratocaster and Jaguar. Alder provides a brighter tone than other woods (such as mahogany), and as alder is not a particularly dense wood it provides a resonant, well-rounded tone with excellent sustain."
I was gonna guess some kind of birch, and loosely speaking, Alders are in the birch family. But, I'm definately not familiar with what you have from a firewood perspective.
Alder bark (Alnus glutinosa) with characteristic lenticels and abnormal lenticels on callused areas.An exception is the smoked Pacific salmon industry in the Pacific Northwest, where alder smoking is essentially universal. This is partly due to indigenous traditions of food preservation in the area, and partly because oak, hickory, mesquite and other woods favored for smoking elsewhere are not locally available in any large quantities. Species used for Pacific salmon smoking are Red alder A. rubra and to a lesser extent Sitka alder A. viridis ssp. sinuata.
Alder is popular as a material for electric guitar bodies. It is used by many guitar makers, notably the Fender Guitar Company, who use it on top quality instruments such as the Stratocaster and Jaguar. Alder provides a brighter tone than other woods (such as mahogany), and as alder is not a particularly dense wood it provides a resonant, well-rounded tone with excellent sustain."
I was gonna guess some kind of birch, and loosely speaking, Alders are in the birch family. But, I'm definately not familiar with what you have from a firewood perspective.
jpl1nh said:
Yes, I cut it. It is on a stream bank. It was about 10 feet tall, and the trunk was six inches in diameter at it's widest.
The location you got it from supports Ncountry's ID. There's a lot growing around here but not in places where I cut. I'll have to keep an eye out for some. Oh yeah, alder has little like pine cones on it. See any of those? If it is alder, let us know how it burns.
I didn't see any cones, but then again, I wasn't looking. The tree was just in my way, and I just cut up the trunk and threw it on the pile. It will be awhile before I burn it, unless it seasons as fast as ash, which I'm bucking, splitting, and burning now.jpl1nh said:
Yes Tag alder always seems to grow in wet areas around here. Check this sight out, it actually has a picture of a cut piece. (broken link removed to http://www.uwgb.edu/biodiversity/herbarium/trees/alninc01.htm)
Well, after checking out that website, I don't think it is tag alder. There is a tag alder growing next to it, though. This tree had a completely different shape to it. The bark is different as well. Maybe this afternoon after work I'll try to find another and snap pics of a standing one. Or maybe I could just glue and tape all the pieces back togetherNcountry said:
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