Black Birch/Cherry/Or?

[james04]

 

In the first image. The second one from the left. What is it? It looks different from all of the other logs on my property. The other logs in the photo are black birch, oak and hickory. If you look at the photo of the crotch there is part of the bark that looks like the black birch but the rest of the bark looks so different. I was wondering if it could be cherry.

James

[Dave Shepard]

Looks like soft maple to me. Acer rubrum.


Dave

[donny hochstetler]

hey guy. i'm from ohio ,we have a lot of hdwds. around here,and i assume we might have some spieces you don't have, and vice versa.. if that log is what i think it is ,we would call that a tame cherry, might be another name for it also.wood is so interesting!! 8)

[WDH]

It is not cherry because the pore structure looks ring porus.  Cherry is not distinctly ring porus like that.  My first inclination was a hickory, but I am leaning toward elm, maybe slippery elm, Ulmus rubra.  But it is hard to tell from the pics.  Can you take some more close-up pics?

[LeeB]

Elm.

[kelLOGg]

The bark and grain looks like Elm to me.

[Ron Wenrich]

Looks like you have a mix of species.  In the first picture, the one to the left is black oak.  Second one is red maple.  Middle one may be a birch, or a small red maple.  End two look more like hickory.  Pictures are always harder to tell than right in person.

[Berkshire]

James

The second one from the left looks like soft maple to me and if your second picture is a cross section of that tree it is soft maple. In that second picture you can see the "greenish/gray" heartwood and two ambrossia streaks at about 2 and 7 o'clock.

Jeff

[beav39]

pics are hard to tell but from where i am they look like soft maple or what we call here white maple

[james04]

 

Seems like most think it is soft maple. These are closer crops. If there is still any doubt I will take some better photos. What is soft maple good for? Is it visually appealing?

One poster said he saw some black oak. If that is true. How do I tell the black oak from the red oak. Is black good for flooring? Will it look the same as the red. I noticed that one log that I was sawing had allot more white sap wood than the other oak I had sawn up to that point. It also had a very sweet almost peachy smell. Versus the normal oak "manure smell" that I am used to. I would say that the manure smell Is what I would consider the "classic" oak smell. I was very surprised at the peachy smell. It was so sweet and fruity.

James

[roger 4400]

    On the photo showing your    red maple,we can see the two stages of it,s bark. When the red maple is young, his bark is almost as uniform as a beech (or light gray color and uniform )( I wish you have that kind  (beech)of tree in your part of the country ?) and when it is getting older, the bark is rougher and making chunks. Red maple can be use to make flooring , furniture,but it is softer than Hard maple (sugar maple) or oak. Black oak...we do not have this kind of tree overhere in Quebec. Good luck.         Roger

[Ron Wenrich]

James

The last picture you have is red maple. 

Black oak can be told by a yellow inner bark.  Its the only oak that has it.  We saw black oak all the time and it gets sold with the red oak.  It doesn't have the same brightness that northern red has, but it matches pretty well. 

I would classify that peachy smell with a good northern red.  Manure smell can come from a couple of problems.  One of them is shake, and the other is mineral streaks.  Quite often they go hand-in-hand.  Pin oak has a foul smell, and is more brown in the heart.

A wider sap band just means it was a faster growing tree.  Oak usually forms heartwood at about 20 years. 

[caz]

Left to right black oak, red maple, sweet cherry or some call it tame cherry,last two look like black ash

[treenail]

That sure looks like soft maple to me.

[SwampDonkey]

I agree on red maple. But, it all looks like a good twitch of firewood to. ;)


Another tree around here that will get those hollow branch stubs is ironwood, but that isn't ironwood.

[james04]

Thank you all. Much appreciated.

Fire wood? The maple is about 16-18" diam. and the hickory is 14-16 I haven't actually measured.

James

[SwampDonkey]

Looked like small crooked stuff in the first picture. I know pictures can be deceiving with no scale reference.

[Brad_bb]

Can't you just poke it with an awl or your finger nail to tell if it's soft or hardwood?

[james04]

Looked like small crooked stuff in the first picture. I know pictures can be deceiving with no scale reference.

Thats my fault for using a wide angle lens. I didn't realize how small I would have to make the picture. I'll have to break out my better lens next time. I use the wide one as it was the "kit" lens.

James

[james04]

Can't you just poke it with an awl or your finger nail to tell if it's soft or hardwood?

I know it's not softwood. I thought it might be black birch or even cherry. I am going with the consensus here and agreeing that it is maple. Ill dig this thread up when I get around to milling it. The only reason they are there is that i am trying to organize all of the logs that I have. It is like playing pickup sticks only on a ridicules scale. The excavator guy just sort of threw them in a pile. Well not that bad but it sure seems like it when your trying to wrestle a 3000 pound oak out from under a pile of poplar and hickory logs.

James

[SwampDonkey]

If it's birch you can see tiny, white dots uniformly spaced, pores (vessels) on the end of the log without a lens with a little squinting. I can see them well on the edges of my coffee table top, which is yellow birch. Scrape a fresh surface with a utility knife. Hard to see anything through chainsaw marks. Maple and cherry you need a 10x lens. Cherry growth rings are more distinct and the bark smells of almond or cyanide. Black birch, sweet birch, cherry birch are all common names for the same tree.

[LeeB]

I still say elm.

[james04]

Thank you SD. I love to learn new things. I have black,yellow and white birch on my property. The yellow is the largest of them all. Lots of black. Only one white.

LeeB,

I like to be open minded. I had some standing dead elm. It has been cut down by the utility company. It was on my property line and in danger of falling across the road. I tried to get the town to do it and they replied. We'll get back to you. So when nothing happened. I asked the utility company to do it when they hooked me up to the grid. Worked like a charm. So yes it would be possible as there was elm on the property. However it is so weathered that I don't think it is useful to compare it. Do you have any suggestions on how to determine if it is Elm?

James   

[Ron Wenrich]

I'm sure that Swamp will have a picture along shortly.  In the meantime, elm has distinct bands in between the growth rings.  These are late wood pores that are arranged in bands.  I believe elm to be the only one like that.

You can do a lot with the old sniff test on a piece of bark.  For black birch, it smells like winter green.  Cherry will smell like cherry wood.  All woods smell a little different. 

[Engineer]

I looked at the picture and before I even read your question, I thought that was soft maple.  Either red maple or silver maple, I have a woods full of that stuff that looks identical to your photos.  In the very first picture on the upper left, from left to right (and not counting the little crooked log on top), it looks like black cherry, soft maple, black birch, and two ash logs.

[james04]

I looked at the picture and before I even read your question, I thought that was soft maple.  Either red maple or silver maple, I have a woods full of that stuff that looks identical to your photos.  In the very first picture on the upper left, from left to right (and not counting the little crooked log on top), it looks like black cherry, soft maple, black birch, and two ash logs.

I think some close up photos are in order here. The one you think is black cherry is actually oak. The two you think are ash are hickory. Unless they are black ash as someone has suggested. I only know what white ash looks like. Ill see if I can take some photos later today.

James

[sharp edge]

I think red maple, yellow birch, bass wood ( its the one with long knots ) and some other wood. If you have bass wood you can tell by the smell. If you make lumber out of bass wood and use it inside the house it will stink-up the house the next 100 years, the older the more stink.
smiley_smelly_skunk
SE

[SwampDonkey]

End grain of red maple. See how the rays are more distinct, but the end of the annual ring is almost not seen? The pores are not as uniform and more clustered. With birch, you are more or less guessing at the wood rays. Yellow birch also has wintergreen smell in the bark and twigs. But the yellow bark shouldn't be confused for black birch. I think black cherry rays are in between birch and red maple for visibility. Rock maple is a different arrangement again, there are wider rays separated by much narrower ones. There is a picture of that to in the sticky thread on the ID by wood grain thread on the 'Tree ID board'.




Here is the ray fleck of maple.




In the elm around here the end grain looks like it has wavy patterns. It's the wood pores (vessels) making the pattern and like most trees the pores get progressively smaller into the late wood. And in American white elm there is only one row of large pores at the beginning of the early wood and the pores that make up the rest of the ring are densely packed, where as the other elms are less dense. Meaning the wood is not really all that dense because of the abundance of pores. You still get that wavy pattern in the other elms though.

[LeeB]

I 've never particularly been around any maple and it could well be maple. the log looks like cedar elm to me and besides all that I'm hard headed, so I'm gonna stick with elm. :D :D :D

[thecfarm]

I'm with Engineer on the maple.I call it white maple,but I'm no tree expect.I have tons of that around here and it looks just like that.

[WDH]

A close up pic of the end grain will solve this mystery.  If it is elm, the latewood pores will be in wavy bands.  Ask Part Timer ;D. 

Swamp has shown the maple and birch pore structure.  The end of the log looked ring porous in the pic, that is why I said elm.  But, it might not be ring porous because it could be sap seeping out making it look like an earlywood band of large pores. 

That smooth section of bark does look like red maple though .

[thecfarm]

Another way to tell,if the tree have not been cut for a year,cut about a foot of one end and try to split it with a splitting maul.If it's in the maple family it should split open some,if it's elm it won't do a thing but laugh at ya.  ;)