What is it and is the wood good for anything?

[srjones]

A guy from church showed us this and we were all stumped.  He says that it's quite likely that it's not native to the area (Pacific northwest), since there were other non native trees planted nearby.  The wood doesn't  have any distinct smell and it's pretty light. 

Any ideas? 

The cones are about 1.5 cm long.

[srjones]

And one more close up...

[Ianab]

Looks like Western Hemlock  ???  :P

Ian

[SwampDonkey]

Yup, looks like western hemlock. Mountain has larger cones and needles are more densely clustered. Major source of lumber and pulp on the west coast.

[jon12345]

There is actually hemlock that doesn't smell?   :D     

[treeboy]

It's western hemlock, we used to call them culvert trees on the mid coast of BC. They are quite sickly, lots of butt rot ect. If they blew over the ends would snap and you could look right down the centre - just like a culvert!

They use to just fall them and leave em, I think now they make moldings and such out of them.

[SwampDonkey]

I crusied quite a few stands of western and mountain hemlock for BC forest companies in the Prince Rupert and Vancouver Forest Regions and they where the largest part of the volume being cut on the Charlottes and north coast islands. Up around the Nass in the mountains, I can't remember anything else I whipped the d-tape around except mountain hemlock and sub-alpine on occassion over toward Meziadin Junction. Up above Hazelton along the Skeena was mostly mountain hemlock with amabilis fir (lower elev) and subalpine fir (up elev) mixed in. Over in Smithers and in Terrace the sawmills where cutting an awefully lot of nice looking hemlock when I was there. ;)

[treeboy]

There were nice hemlocks ..... but everyone I ran into was a little prejudice about hemlock. They would much rather see spruce or fir. The hemrot as they called it just wasn't as nice! I don't know what they use it for. I much prefer hugging the western red myself :D

I was working for a consultant company out of Smithters in 96ish. We had work with Buffalo Head, Skeena and Babine.

[SwampDonkey]

As far as my preference is concerned, well that's another species. ;) I prefer the sitka spruce, but I hate having to almost lay on the ground to the see the tops on the flat land or have to walk upslope 60 meters from every tree.  Western red is ok, accept all the moss and sometimes salal vines ( if you never worked in salal, that's a real treat) you have to scrape off, prefer yellow cypress in that instance. ;D

[treeboy]

Salal's a walk in the park compared to devils club - you must have walked into some of that during your time in BC. Cypress is also very nice, just not as big being alpine, and seems to be more black flies.

[SwampDonkey]

Very little devil's club on the Charlottes, but up the Skeena, that was a nightmare. I couldn't even see the ground most the time. Salal was not so easy where I cruised, you had to cut a swath through the stuff to every tree and pull vines away from the trunk. Kinda puts a damper on production. ;D

[srjones]

Hey all, sorry I haven't posted in a while.  I'm back to the work that pays the bills.  Yes, it's western hemlock.  I confirmed and few things with the guy, specifically the rotten center.

Thanks for the help!  8)

-Steve