I hate that I am creating one of those types of posts, but I am going to put on my big boy britches, climb that mountain and get over it.
I am reasonably good at identifying the naturally occurring trees in the wilds of Georgia. It takes me only a glance to identify these three specimens as sourwood at varying stages of maturity.
Alas, they have all passed on the great tree hereafter and will not be creating any further leaves to aid in identification.
A friend posited chestnut, and Iāve looked at pictures of that, osage orange, sassafras, black locust and honey locust, but I donāt feel confident in saying that they are any of those species. Any thoughts to offer?
Really?! I hadnāt even considered a native persimmon. I donāt recall having ever seen the bark of the native persimmons grow in those long, sloping but interconnected blocks. The way that I quickly distinguish persimmon from sourwood solely from glancing at the bark is that the sourwood has more of the long furrows, whereas the persimmon is blocky and disconnected.
Saw the title and then the first picture and was like, huh, Iād have thought sourwood. Felt pretty good about my gut instinct there.
Definitely not persimmon, at least not any persimmon Iāve seen in NC. āAlligator skinā describes persimmon. Iāve never seen that kind of coarse woven texture on persimmon.
Seems the right texture for black locust, but too red. My guess would be Osage. But no thorns so hmmm. That dead section without bark sure looks like black locust in the borer-infested South, haha
Honey locust and osage would most likely have large thorns on the trunk or branches, black locust would have smaller ārose bushā thorns on the branches. Sassafras will have very green colored twigs and a very strong aroma when the twigs are broken.
If I saw branching above it would be easier to guess sassafras, but my guess is sassafras. Iāve pulled down some really big ones to install as root wads on a streambank stabilization project.
Are these all the same species or could they be three (or two) different species? And Iām assuming theyāre all deciduous - no needle like leaves.
Also, itās a bit hard to get a sense of scale for the size of the ridges. Are these are smallish diameter (a foot)?
If you could put a quarter on top of the ridges of the third pictured tree and the quarter would fit on top of the ridge - I would say it is sassafras.
Second one looks oak -like.
Black locust tends to have a checkerboard kind of pattern on the ridges, so I agree none are black locust.
I have only owned the property since May of 2022. I didnāt discover the first one until last year, and the other two dead ones in this year. They are all in good bottom land where the creek has deposited alluvial soil during overflow events but they are well away from the creek bank. I would hazard that the nearest is 75 feet distant.
I do have sassafras on the property, and at the house that I used to own I had the second largest sassafras that Iāve ever seen in-person. The bark was very different, as well as the trunk shape. Unfortunately these 3 are so dead that I suspect I wouldnāt get anything but dust.
They have unfortunately been dead long enough that their tops are all gone, along with any ability for me to discern deciduous versus coniferous. I might resort to cutting one down to get a picture of the end grain as well as ripping to show the cross grain. I think that they are all the same species. They are within about 75 feet of each other.
I can get a picture with a BANANA FOR SCALE (bad Internet joke), or some with a uniformly sized object that everyone will recognize, maybe a SKY HOOK (1940s engineerās joke), or just a plain ole United States of America quarter dollar coin. I like the idea of having a little scale to the pictures. Maybe I should use one of those SMALL POSTAL SCALES that every office has laying around.
Okay, enough cutting up for tonight, rest well everyone and thank you for all the input you have already offered.
Sassafras is typically a short lived species. The recently dead ones should still smell like it if you cut them down.
Fun fact- there are apparently still a few sassafras tree āpipesā around Pittsburgh that used to be drainage pipes before plastic was used. They were naturally hollowed /rotted out and cut and placed together.
Black locust is bright yellow, good for fence posts/fire wood
Osage Orange orange, used in golf clubs 40 years ago, guitar wood today
Sassafras, tan with big grain and smells so nice. Camp fire wood
especially the middle two with those reds in the bark. An occasionally flooded creek bottom would make sense as habitat as well. Just my two cents, less familiar with southern species
For those that are interested, I really like this book called āBarkā by Michael Wojtech. The idenification part only covers the northeast, but itās got tons of interesting stuff about bark. Itās just a different way to think about trees vs. the super in your face parts (flowers, leaves).
Itās also driven me to REALLY LOOK at some of the features of my fruit trees. When I first got my house I couldnāt tell the difference between an apple tree and a pear tree. Now, I think itās so obvious!
Unfortunately, if it isnāt a tree type Iāve gotten a chance to study- Iāve still got no clueā¦ but Iām getting better all the time. And I really enjoy looking at trees and trying to figure them out - so these pictures are fun.
