Fixed the Pics, Bark Identification, Sorry no leaves!!

Ronnie · October 14, 2012, 08:49:19 PM

Fixed the pics

There are very few leaves left on these trees but it looks like the leaves are similar to walnut they are very hard to see there isn't many of them left. The only leaves are way way up on the top and I can't get a look at them. I have several of these and are all dead or almost dead. Any ideas???? I live in Linn County Kansas.

Axe Handle Hound · October 14, 2012, 08:54:53 PM

Those are some pretty small pics, but if I had to guess I'd say green ash, followed by walnut as a second guess. Any chance you could get a bigger photo and maybe a photo that shows the structure of the whole tree?

thecfarm · October 14, 2012, 09:04:56 PM

Looks like ash to me,but I've never seen walnut in person.

WDH · October 14, 2012, 10:06:36 PM

Yes, it is an ash. To verify, check that the branches and leaves are opposite on the stem, not alternating. That green lichen loves ash. The bark is not dark enough for walnut.

Okrafarmer · October 14, 2012, 11:33:00 PM

If you can't see any branches up close enough, lightly smash a small section of bark with a rock or hammer. Ash bark crumbles and is orangy or dull yellow or grayish in color. Walnut bark will be dark brown just under the surface, every time. Hickory bark will not easily smash off with a hammer; if it looks tight, it is tight.

Ash also make a winged seed, kind of like maple. Walnuts, well, they make these green balls that look like oranges.

But I agree, I've never seen a walnut that big with bark that light. Some of the juvenile walnuts I have found around here have bark that color, more or less, but not once they get over 8-10" diameter.

WHD is right, the primary way to tell ash from any other tree with furrowed bark, is the opposite leaves.

SwampDonkey · October 15, 2012, 06:45:40 AM

Okra, if you take a knife and get past the dead outer bark of walnut and into the live inner bark you will discover it is yellow. Same goes for butternut.

walnut

butternut

As to the original question, they appear to be ash.

Ronnie · October 15, 2012, 11:11:14 AM

Thanks for everyone's help identifying these big ash trees! I am going to go cut one down and drag it to the mill. I will post another pic of the inside of it.

Okrafarmer · October 16, 2012, 01:03:25 AM

Just today I identified an ash log by the way the bark crumbles, no leaves or twigs to look at. SD, that walnut outer bark is slightly lighter than I have seen. I usually just pick a tiny bit off a tree to make sure it's walnut, especially if the tree isn't mine to cut down. Or the log isn't mine to mess with. ;D

SwampDonkey · October 16, 2012, 06:25:38 AM

That area of inner bark wouldn't be much more the the size of a pea, it's zoomed in. And the outer bark, well can't heart dead fibre. ;D The walnut is a young tree planted in 1992. Wow 20 years ago.

The nuts off it would just lay on the ground because the local squirrels didn't figure them out. They always take the butternuts. This fall was the first time I noticed a red squirrel picking them and shelling them by the window on the wood pile. Too bad for him though, I saw him in the basement, so I need to get out the trap. :/ Yeah they would never touch them before. They would just lay in the grass. I still think they are not so fussy over them because a few are still on the trees. They may not like the thick rind/husk.

I've seen Balm confused for red oak by someone who should have known. ;) The bark on a balm tree changes a lot when it gets old, turns orange brown and deep furrows. I only see it get big in cedar forest that was not cut.

Okrafarmer · October 16, 2012, 08:53:08 AM

Just be glad you don't have sweetgum there, SD. With the leaves off, SG is hard to tell, unless you can see the little gum balls hanging on up there. Around here, SG can camouflage itself to look like most other hardwoods, including oaks, maple, tulip poplar, ash, hickory, and whatever. The bark pattern is very variable. I bought two logs at the log yard earlier this year, and both I and the log yard owner (who had been a sawyer for many years before starting the broker yard) thought they were maple logs. They turned out to be sweetgum. There were ways, of course, that I could have told for sure if I had doubted, but I didn't doubt his word, and they did look like maple logs. He is not the type to intentionally deceive people, either.

WDH · October 16, 2012, 08:29:53 PM

Sweetgum bark has a corkiness to it. The twigs usually also have corky wings.

JohnW · October 16, 2012, 11:35:37 PM

Persimmon also looks a lot like that ash, barkwize.

Okrafarmer · October 17, 2012, 12:02:02 AM

Quote from: WDH on October 16, 2012, 08:29:53 PM
Sweetgum bark has a corkiness to it. The twigs usually also have corky wings.

Yes on the bark. On the twigs, only a small percentage of the SG trees have the corky wings around here (much like winged elm). It is usually seen in saplings and they grow out of it, and not even all saplings have it. The wings are SG's attempt to pass itself off as an elm. ;) Bark and tree form lead to it being mistaken for oak, maple, poplar, ash, hickory, pecan, sourg gum, and other things. The seed balls are a dead giveaway when those are present, but in the case of a dead tree, there's less to go by. I'm getting better and better at IDing SG, but I still get thrown sometimes if the leaves and gum balls are absent. One of my friends stood there and swore up and down the dead tree in his yard was an oak, but it was a sweetgum.

When looking at logs, the heartwood is a quick clue in many individual SG logs, as it is one of the few (maybe the only) to have a highly irregular heartwood shape, often the heartwood is octopus shaped, etc. But those two I bought (both from the same tree) had round heartwood.

SwampDonkey · October 17, 2012, 05:07:22 AM

Quote from: WDH on October 16, 2012, 08:29:53 PM
~~Sweetgum bark has a corkiness to it.~~ The twigs usually also have corky wings.

Bur oak has older twigs that have corkyness to. They are not rounded at least. I have a photo here in "Native Trees of Canada" ;D

Red maple often has an irregular star shape (and anything but round) to it in the heartwood. This is probably due to injury and coppice regeneration.

Okrafarmer · October 17, 2012, 09:50:18 AM

I've never seen it in maple, but is a very common thing in sweetgum. I don't doubt you, as I have certainly not seen a very high percentage of all the maple logs out there. ;D A lot of the sweetgum hearts could be said to be "Antarctica shaped" or other such things.

doctorb · October 17, 2012, 05:24:23 PM

Quote from: JohnW on October 16, 2012, 11:35:37 PM
Persimmon also looks a lot like that ash, barkwize.

That "block upon block" look had me thinking that persimmon was a possibility too.

WDH · October 17, 2012, 08:37:19 PM

Persimmon bark will be very knobby and black (more square knobby and not interlaced knobby like ash.). The knobbiness looks like the top of an alligator hide. Black gum on a dry site is bad to be knobby, too, but not black knobby

.

Okrafarmer · October 17, 2012, 11:29:38 PM

There seems to be a lot of variation in the bark of many many species. :-\ If you're not familiar with the range of variations, you need at least one more identifier. (Including myself there-- I get tricked a bunch, esp by Sweetgummery).