It shows a picture of young growth which is very green. I didn’t get a picture of this today but I looked at the branch tips in the brush pile we made and it looked exactly like this. So I’m content in calling this Sassafras. If I get a chance this weekend I’ll cut a piece up and turn it on the lathe to get better look at its grain. Sassafras is pretty common here. I’ve got a couple of them on my property. I’ve picked leaves off of it and let my daughter smell them. Really interesting smell. I tried smelling the cut wood but I really couldn’t smell anything. I don’t know if the wood itself smells or just the leaves.
If you snap the young branches they smell soapy. If scratch the roots you’re going to smell rootbeer. I thought it was sassafrass right away but I thought the crotched log looked like white oak.
Cherry is so easy to identify by the smell, as is oak and sassafras. Cherry has that strychnine smell and Sas like rootbeer- oak has a high tannin smell. All I saw looked like cherry in the truck, more based on the wood than the bark, although the bark added some evidence, but a photo is not the same as seeing.
That’s what I would consider the tell-tale sign of mature sassafras apart from leaves. (I’ve never smelled the roots or noticed any smell to the wood.)
I have a lot of sassafras. I also heat with an outdoor wood stove and cut 25 trailer loads a year of various wood. The stands of sassafras are usually clumped together. Their roots intermingle a lot and sucker up to grow more trees. Sometimes I’m just working with the ground digging and the sand will smell really strong like rootbeer. There will also be a sassafras tree near by. I wouldn’t even have to bee in the roots. I cut a couple down when making my orchard and they suckered up all over the ground for about a forty foot circle. I just kept mowing them over but where I put my deer fence they kept growing. Once a year I have to hand snip them. They have been hard to get rid of. Over the years of cutting it I have noticed a lot of the trees have rotted heartwood. Some of the trees have been hollowed out by squirrels or woodpeckers. It’s a very light wood that burns hot and fast. It’s my go to wood for starting fires. Just grab a lower dead branch and break it into a small pile and it fires right up with one match even after it rained.
If it’s Sassafras, those are some huge specimens. They are slow growing. Beautiful trees, though, in all seasons. The autumn foliage is spectacular. The roots can be steeped into a tasty tea, but don’t drink too much. It can become toxic.