So what to do with Aspen logs?

[beenthere]

2StateTrigger
Not likely anyone knew that... outside the USFS. No offense meant to Rocky

I was kidding and being facetious.  ;)

[BEEMERS]

I believe the rees out west are quaking Aspen. Here in MI we have both quaking and Big Tooth.I don't generally see the together.The quaking are smaller and with a creamier bark and the Big tooth can be crappy little scraggly things or huge monster good for veneer depending greatly on soil types and water table.
where im at I sell to a mill that makes pallets.Ive sold form $95 to $130 a cord depending on the market...I think I in this year at $130...
Ive sold veneer Aspen for $450per thousand square feet.
if it doesn't make grade for pallets it goes for pulp..thats where Im at I know different regions have different markets.

[BEEMERS]

If you go to my gallery all the logs in it are Big Tooth Aspen..the stacks are sawlogs and most of the rest is veneer.if anyone wants to take from my gallery and post it here that's fine with me Im not good at it.

[Rocky_Ranger]

No issues with the"GMUG" miff - I've worked for this outfit so DanG long I talk in code sometimes.  I should have spelled it out - of course, it'd take me a spell to type that conglomeration of letters :D

[Ljohnsaw]

If you go to my gallery all the logs in it are Big Tooth Aspen..the stacks are sawlogs and most of the rest is veneer.if anyone wants to take from my gallery and post it here that's fine with me Im not good at it.

Wow, waaaaay different looking than my Quaking Aspen out here in the west!

 

[SwampDonkey]

  Looking at Wikipedia you are correct! I always thought the quaking leaf aspen was strictly a Rocky Mt. tree. Everybody that visits us from back east thinks our aspens are birch.

You also have balsam poplar which is almost as popular as the quaking kind. ;D At times mills take all aspens/popples here, and sometimes they get fussier and don't want balsam poplar. I think the wood of aspens is much the same as cottonwood. Out west they have black cottonwood and you can't tell it apart very easy from balsam. They both have sticky stinky buds. ;D

[grassfed]

As far as variation there are not many hard lines. On my land they hybridise. When I first walked the land with a forester I asked him to ID some trees and he told me that they were Aspen hybrids;  later I also read it in the USDA Plant database: http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_potr5.pdf

Quaking aspen hybridizes naturally with bigtooth
aspen (Populus grandidentata), narrowleaf
cottonwood (P. angustifolia), curly poplar (P.
canescens), balsam poplar (P. balsamifera), eastern
cottonwood (P. deltoides), and white poplar (Populus
alba, a naturalized European species), and hybrids
with black cottonwood (P. trichocarpa) occur rarely
in Alaska[/quote

ljohnsaw I have aspens that look exactly like the ones in your picture and I also have Balsam Poplars (Balm of Gilead) and there are also trees that are somewhere in between ; more silver (less yellow)  and rougher bark than Quaking but not as rough and silver as Balsam. The best lumber comes from the large vigorous quaking aspens that grow on better drained areas. That may be why they do better out west where it is dryer

[SwampDonkey]

You don't get the quality from second growth aspen either. Seed born aspen is much nicer. You don't have all the diseases that might get transmitted in inter connected roots off the parent tree. And aspen suckering on wet ground is pretty poor, I see it here all the time, and the moose will destroy most of it on those sights around here. I usually have to cut most of it down when thinning with a brush saw because the tops are broke off or just dead stubs in the way.

[redprospector]

Hmm.
Around here if you're talking about Balsam, you ain't talking about Aspen.

[SwampDonkey]

we have balsam poplar (an aspen of the populous genus) and balsam fir, Both have resin. What do you have?

They still make cold medicine from balsam fir resin. ;D

We call aspens popple or poplar up here, but to the south it's an entirely different tree. Tulip tree.

[shinnlinger]

I have my local sawyer make boards out of quaking and big tooth into boards for my woodshop students.  Doesn't gum up the machines like pine and  the projects look pretty good.   Thick stuff gets made into bowls.   

[barbender]

Balsam poplar is usually referred to as Balmy, or Bam, or Balm of Gilead around here. On some sites it actually grows with pretty nice form, it seems to prefer a bit wetter ground. As a matter of fact, Aspen stands of transition to Balmy as the site gets wetter.
     Ljohnsaw, your quaking aspen looks just like MN quaking aspen ;)

[BEEMERS]

Funny thing..I don't know if we have Balsam Aspen .I don't know if we have Balm of Gilead..I don't know what either one are..but all my life the old boys always pointed to a certain type of tree and said ......Bombagilliard.....Thats exactly how they pronounce it and they all never have waivered from that.
I swear everytime its a Cottonwood.But what do I know?
If you pronounced it right YOUD be the weirdo!!
Also whenever I say the word Aspen when referring to...Aspen...they look at me like IVE lost my mind!!!..So I say "Popple" and they nod like..."There ya go boy...now ya got it right!!!"

[BEEMERS]

 

 

Big Tooth aspen 130 feet tall 26 inch dbh 50 feet of veneer..Central of lower Penn. Michigan on my property.

[BEEMERS]

 

 
My scaler going to work on Bigtooth Aspen.

[SwampDonkey]

Yes them codgers use those terms up here to with balsam poplar or balm-of-gilead, or what however it comes out with a wad of chewing tobacco in their cheek. :D Our aspen here get no taller than 90 feet and I've seen them 36 at dbh, but they are all about gone from this area that big. Been cut or fell down by now. I've seen big balm to and the bark gets orangy and deep furrows. Those were in cedar swamps. I think they have better form than most aspen truth be told. But we have good aspen ground and some real bad knarly stuff to.  ;D


Don't be fooled by the beech leaves, but these are large tooth with the white blotches growing on hardwood ground.



Here's a 32" incher growing near the edge of a cedar swamp. Still see the white spots in the old bark.



They get limy because they grow taller than the cedar.




26" dbh trembling in a cedar swamp mixed with fir.



Nasty widow maker with conk and long branches in a  cedar swamp , 36" dbh.



Another widespread nasty one about the same dbh, around 80 feet tall in cedar stand.



balm buds



trembling with flower buds



large tooth twig

[Ljohnsaw]

SD,
Great pictures of the buds.  Too bad I have to cut my trees down to see them!  My limbs are a good 100-120' up and my eyes aren't that good anymore.  Maybe get a spotting scope...

[redprospector]

we have balsam poplar (an aspen of the populous genus) and balsam fir, Both have resin. What do you have?

They still make cold medicine from balsam fir resin. ;D

We call aspens popple or poplar up here, but to the south it's an entirely different tree. Tulip tree.

We've got Balsam Fir. Heck, I didn't even know there was such a critter as balsam poplar. Learn something new every day.  ;D

[SwampDonkey]

make some logs and boards.  ;D :D

[grassfed]

balm-of-gilead, or what however it comes out with a wad of chewing tobacco in their cheek.

I have a neighbor that calls balm-of-gilead bomb-a-gillyon. :

[chester_tree _farmah]

Bomb-a-gillyon. Lol. Nice. How about calling quaking the Money tree? Local nickname around here. Not sure if it's because the leaves dangle like bills on a dollar tree or because they grow fast and bring decent money. Once u  r around them enough it's pretty easy to tell them apart. They will only take 10% Bomb-a-gillyon in a pulp load. The boards from the Bomb-a-gillyon have a lot of character as Swamp Donkey aludes too - a lot. Nice pics Swamp Donkey. :)

[cutterboy]

Aspen makes good looking lumber. Usually light in color


 
but sometimes darker


 
The lumber came from two different trees, both Quaking Aspen.

[BEEMERS]

Anyone have pictures of Bomb-a-Gillion? I swear everytime someone said that here they were pointing at a Cottonwood.

[SwampDonkey]

The name balm of Gilead was from an ointment made for cold medicine from the resin in the buds of balsam poplar. How it got construed to other labels from that is mysterious. :D

http://tidcf.nrcan.gc.ca/en/trees/factsheet/53

And resin of balsam fir is still used in cold medicine as Buckley's Mixture. ;D

http://www.buckleys.ca/products/adult_liquids

click on "more product info" and look under "non-medicinal ingredients."  There is also pine needle oil in  it. :D

There seems to be a cross between balsamifera and deltoides (eastern cottonwood) they call balm of Gilead as well or P. × gileadensis.

[BEEMERS]

So....Is balsam poplar also known as balm of Gilead? or is it a seperate species? Are we dealing with two or three different names for one species of tree? Cottonwood?  Or Three seperate Species?
Here the old boys call cotton wood Bomb-a-Gilliards.