Today at work we had to pull down 2 trees. Instead of leaving it lay we cut it up and split it between me and my coworker. My woodturning lathe hobby has me constantly searching for free wood. Anyway, I’m a confident tree identifier when it comes to leave on, but I’m quite poor at identifying trees from bark. In the back of my truck you can see two species of wood. The logs that have solid white end grain I believe are Black Locust. The other species I’m questioning. It has bark that looks like cherry and has a sharp distinction between the sapwood and heartwood. And it is very heavy when compared to the other wood. What makes me question it though is that the cherry tree I cut down at my home had lighter colored sapwood and darker colored heartwood. The exact opposite of what I cut down today.
So is this cherry or something else?
The one is 100% cherry the other dose not look like any black locust I have ever cut .
My guess is some kind of oak-- probably in the red oak family.
Did the one you thought was black locust have thorns ? I have cut / sawn my share of black locust and it has greenish tinges to it . It is a real pretty wood to make things with.
Yes maybe you are right. I don’t see any green and don’t remember any thorns. I thought it might be locust because of the bark. But it’s hard to see it in pictures due to the lichen. I can tell you for sure it is not as heavy as the cherry.
Guess it could be oak but I thought oak and cherry were about the same weight
If it was black locust you would have no problem remembering the thorns !
Black locust is heavy- and burns beautifully. Hard on tools though.
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Honey Locust has the thorms, not Black Locust.
I am going to have to disagree on that . Black locust do not have thorns on the trunks like honey locust do (there is a thorn less honey locust )but they have plenty of thorns along the branches that you can’t miss when dealing with it .
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Black Locust is armed with two spines at the base of each leaf or leaf bud.
Haywood Co., NC 5/10/08.
http://www.carolinanature.com/trees/rops.html
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I am going to take a stab at your other wood and “guess” it “might be” hackberry . Really hard to what it is from a pic with a few pieces fire wood, but at the same time there is a lot of what it is not you can tell from the pic.
Okay thanks. I’m not familiar with Hackberry at all. I’ve heard of it but could not identify it even in the summer. After thinking about it and seeing the link you provided I’m sure its not locust.
I should get a scale out and weight a piece of it versus that cherry.
There’s a huge difference in the density (i.e. weight per size of log) of fresh green wood and dry wood. I wouldn’t assume that species of wood that are denser when weighed dry would necessarily be denser when weighed wet/green.
You couldn’t post any photos of branches, could you? Some photos that showed the branching pattern and some close-ups that showed the buds could potentially be very helpful. A close-up of the mature bark could help, too.
It’s definitely not Hackberry.
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That’s wild black cherry with the ones that have the darker ring on the new growth. You should be able to smell it if you get right up on a fresh cut. It will start to turn red as it dries out. Looks like a few of sassafras, those smell like root beer, and a couple of oak.
Johnny might be right. If the bark looks like “cornflakes” up close, then it could be native American Black Cherry.
The ones with the thick bark look like the sassafras and the one with the fork looks like white oak along with one log below. Those will smell like vinegar.
It would be more yellowish gold color too if it were black locust. Honey has a flat bark and the wood looks creamy.
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We only pulled down two trees. So there are only two wood types there. One with the distinct ring and one without. I’ll be back to that job site today and will try to get more pictures
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Ok it’s hard to see the forked one good it could be cherry still. It may have a fresher cut than the other cherry makes it look like white oak. White oak has a flake bark and red has a thicker bark that doesn’t flake. I’m not seeing the darker ring on the sap wood like the rest of the cherry but it has the flake bark. That’s what makes me think it might not have exposed to the air as long.
