counting trees

[mountaineer]

is this a tulip poplar sapling?  and here is another pic of the undetermined wood.

[Dodgy Loner]

The plant is a may-apple (Podophyllum peltatum).  Occurs mostly on rich slopes in hardwood forests.  The plants flower in May, and produce edible fruit that are said to taste like apples, hence the common name.

Regarding the unidentified wood, I think your new pictures raise more questions than answers...Let me scratch my head for a while :-\

[SwampDonkey]

Sure looks like red maple, and it's now pithy or spaulted maple from rot. What appears to be ring porous is just early wood versus late wood. Sure, maple have pores but too tiny to see at a macro scale. I see that all through my wood pile.

[mountaineer]

so is that why they call it red maple because it's red inside? the silver maple that i have cut is white all the way through.

[Tom]

I'm not trying to name that wood, but a consideration might be Willow.  I have had black willow with straight grained, easily split wood with color like that when mature.

[mountaineer]

i just came from the spot where i cut the wood and there are several trees identical to the mystery tree. i will take some pics and as soon as they start budding i will take pics of those as well. there are a lot of oak leaves around that area. some with pointy ends and some with round ends. there are two other downed trees just like the one i cut up but are in worse shape.(maybe not worth firewood). just to note that these trees are on the south facing slope and i don't see any on the northface. it seems to be heavy(dense) wood and should be really good to burn. as far as the may-apple, i can't wait to try the fruit. looking forward to it. there are a lot of these growing near a spring coming out of the mountain. there is also a large tulip poplar beside the spring. this is probably why it is so large.

[Dodgy Loner]

Sure looks like red maple, and it's now pithy or spaulted maple from rot. What appears to be ring porous is just early wood versus late wood. Sure, maple have pores but too tiny to see at a macro scale. I see that all through my wood pile.

I very highly doubt that's a red maple.  The interlacing bark, the ring-porous grain (I'd bet money that we're seeing ring-pores and not just earlywood-latewood transition), and the heartwood just don't match up.  I'll save any future guesses until after I see the leaves on the live tree mountaineer found.

Mountaineer - just a word of caution: all parts of the may-apple are poisonous, except the fruit.  I'm sure you're smart enough not to go around eating random leaves and stems, but I didn't want to be the cause of any unnecessary gastrointestinal distress  ;).

[mountaineer]

thx for the warning. so no problem with the fruit though right?  smiley_sick smiley_sick hate to 
get sick. a little story.... when i lived at the beach a few years ago i worked construction with an older gentleman that was fairly wise about a lot of things. one day we saw a fruit hanging off a plant and he said it was blah blah.(can't remember) he said you could eat it and that they were good. now this guy isn't a bull...er and would not lie just for laughs. he said it was what he thought it was for sure. so i ate it. tastes sweet and pretty good. nothing happened and i lived through it. the next day he told me it wasn't what he thought it was and he had no idea what it really was. he was from greenville pa originally but we were both on the outer banks of nc. he remembered it from back home so i probably should have wondered since these two places are worlds apart. well anyway i lived so either i didn't eat enough to hurt me or it was ok to eat. so i am a bit more careful. oh and the mystery is hard to cut. when i cut further down the tree closer to the ground it got really hard to cut. almost like a dull chain but it was fine. really heavy wood too. just came back with a load. i saw a lot of nuts around the tree too. not acorns but another round nut. could it be walnut? it might be from a surrounding tree but they looked old and not fresh.(this year)

[SwampDonkey]

red maple is called that mainly because of fall foliage and also red flowers.

Our red maple is dark like that most of the time up here especially second growth. I don't see any interlock grain in the bark, all I see is annual rings in the bark.  Anyway, looking like red maple from a picture and being red maple are not necessarily in mutual agreement. :D  ;)  I haven't got any but slab wood left, all gone through the furnace. All I have is young limb wood left. I never saw American elm with sapwood that white before. But, I never saw other elm species.

Is there a gray or purple cast to the heart? I see both here in red maple, but when the wood is rotting like that piece looks to be, the heart is dark.

I guess I'll have to squint harder.  ;D

[Dodgy Loner]

Pictures of the round nuts in question would help.  It's actually starting to sound more like hickory than anything else.  Walnut might be a possibility, but it has pretty soft bark that is chocolate brown when cut into.

[SwampDonkey]

Nuts? On a dead tree? Interesting onto itself. The hickory does sound plausible.

[mountaineer]

not on but around. in the vicinity. close enough for an idiot such as myself to go hmm :D.....

[WDH]

My first thought was mulberry, but the sapwood is a little too wide.  Hickory fits, especially the scaly form of pignut.  If those round nuts came from that tree, then the mystery is solved.  However, the spalting indicates that the tree has been dead a good while, so those nuts may be a red herring.

[OneWithWood]

I find mounds of acorns under maples without an oak anywhere close.  Our furry little friends and winged ones have a habbit of transporting nuts all over the place so it would be unwise to assume the nuts are from the nearest tree.

[SwampDonkey]

Ditto to the last two posts, I just didn't know how the phrase it, concerning the location of those nuts.  :D

[Dodgy Loner]

You can't be sure the nuts are from the right tree, but you also can't be sure that they're not.  I had the hardest time trying to get my students to be observant enough to look around on the ground for clues during dendrology labs, until the leaves fell off and they had little choice.  All possible avenues should be investigated, even if they turn out to be dead ends .

One dirty little trick I would pull occasionally was to quiz the students on a dead tree with no leaves or buds.  All they had to go by was the bark and the form.  The more observant students would always notice that there was a live specimen of the same species very close by, whose leaves and twigs could be easily observed ;D.

[mountaineer]

hey dodgy you might want to make another post real quick like. look what number you're on

[beenthere]

Dodgy Loner
Your "dirty little trick" reminds me of forestry summer camp....in New Mexico...dry, 'park-like' ponderosa pine stand, and our Prof was on a soils class.
Object was to pair up, dig a soil pit about 2' deep, and use the knowledge gained from his teachings to classify the soil.
My partner and I dug our pit, filled out the field notes and figured we were done. He had to relieve himself so used the pit.

Didn't know the prof was going to cruise around among the pits and double check our work. When he got to our pit, he said "gather around boys, and come over here. As you can see the water table is up (I think there were still signs of bubbles in the bottom :D :D) in this area, and the dark, damp soil is indicitave of that" (as he reached into the bottom of the pit and brought out a handful of mud, squeezing it in a ball like a farmer in his newly plowed ground. My partner and I were behind the nearest ponderosa laughing so hard our sides were splitting. Poor prof was clueless, but the other guys were catching on pretty fast.   :D :D :D

[Dodgy Loner]

 :D :D :D

(mountaineer - problem solved ;))

[Jeff]

 :D :D

[mountaineer]

hey dodgy are you teaching at uga? is it for your masters? (i see it says you are 24)

[mountaineer]

i have found several more dead mystery trees to cut up. when i split the wood it cracks easily and splits well but it tends to hold on to each other with the strings of wood. has a sour smell as well. as promised i will take pics as soon as they bud and i can get a good shot.

[SwampDonkey]

An unofficial forestry term comes to mind. pith maple aka red maple with spalt or heart rot, it's a local term I here a lot from firewood guys and irate home owners who thought they were getting rock maple.  The but log with curl can be twisty stuff to split. ;D

[mountaineer]

here are three pics. one is of nuts directly under the mystery tree. another is a pic of the tree buds, (though not very close) and the other is three of the trees together. please don't shoot the deer in the pic cause thats my dog.  :D :D

[SwampDonkey]

Were the buds reddish, rounded to a tip and canted to one side? Get out your tree climbing gear. :D