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Butternut tree?

Started by fluidpowerpro, May 17, 2022, 11:34:57 AM

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fluidpowerpro

An elderly neighbor has a tree she wants taken down and I volunteered to do it. The trunk is not that big but I was thinking I'd put it on the band mill just to see what the wood is like. It this a butternut tree? A few years ago the last as a very similar tree right next to it that is since gone. One year it produced a bunch of nuts that someone told me were, I think, butternuts. They looked like a smaller version of a walnut. The squirrels decided to store a bunch in the air filter of my truck. The trees are just getting leaves here so the one pic is of juvenile leaves.

 

 

 
Change is hard....
Especially when a jar full of it falls off the top shelf and hits your head!

SwampDonkey

"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

fluidpowerpro

If that's what it is, I feel very stupid, again....I should have waited longer for the leaves to develop more. I swore it was the same as the one that was next to it that bore nuts.
Change is hard....
Especially when a jar full of it falls off the top shelf and hits your head!

WDH

Maple has a simple leaf like in your pic.  Butternut has a compound leaf with many leaflets. 
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

KEC

Not Butternut, bark resembles Sugar Maple, leaves wrong for Sugar Maple, leaves similar to Red Maple. Where do we go from here ?

WDH

It is certainly red maple.  Red maple is toothed between the lobes like in the pic.  Sugar maple is not toothed between the lobes.
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

Old Greenhorn

Mountain Maple is also toothed between the lobes and has the red tint in the leaf stems. It appears on your leaves the center lobe is a lot longer than the outside lobes which I think is more common on the mountain maple?
 Could you find any branches that still had buds? The red will have clusters of buds tightly packed in groups. With what I can see, I would guess Red also and be pretty comfortable. Definitely not butternut, completely different leaf structure. Sorry.
Tom Lindtveit, Woodsman Forest Products
Oscar 328 Band Mill, Husky 350, 450, 562, & 372 (Clone), Mule 3010, and too many hand tools. :) Retired and trying to make a living to stay that way. NYLT Certified.
OK, maybe I'm the woodcutter now.
I work with wood, There is a rumor I might be a woodworker.

WDH

Bark is wrong for mountain maple.  

Also tree seems much larger than the size of mountain from what I understand.  But, I am eager to be be educated about mountain maple as it is not a species that I am very familiar with. 
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

Old Greenhorn

Nor am I. I was just going through the maple leaf shapes and saw the mountain and noticed the rounded bottom similar to the red and the pronounced center lobe and found it similar. Never looked at the bark. Bark pictures are tough to work with in the case of maples. With Red verses Sugar, I find the sugar is almost always got a blackish tint to it, unless in a young tree, then I give up because they are too close in appearance. :D
Tom Lindtveit, Woodsman Forest Products
Oscar 328 Band Mill, Husky 350, 450, 562, & 372 (Clone), Mule 3010, and too many hand tools. :) Retired and trying to make a living to stay that way. NYLT Certified.
OK, maybe I'm the woodcutter now.
I work with wood, There is a rumor I might be a woodworker.

SwampDonkey

Mountain maple is very soft and a multi-stemmed shrubs up here. I've been mowing down a bunch of it with the clearing saw the last two days. :D

Looks like a red maple, twig and leaves from here.

Butternut twigs are a bit more stout than maple. They leaf out slow like ash. Young butternut have some faint striping in the bark, not as pronounced as striped maple, but definitely striped.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

KEC

So, is Mountain Maple and Striped Maple one and the same? I have seen many trees that I believed to be Striped Maple and I don't know that any were more than 4-5" in diameter. Deer are said to browse it.

Old Greenhorn

Nope, they are different. Striped maple I consider a scourge here about. There are some redeeming qualities for some folks, good for weaving stuff, etc. The bark is distinctive in a striped maple (hence the name). I don't have a book with leaf photos to compare. Maybe WDH can elucidate?
Tom Lindtveit, Woodsman Forest Products
Oscar 328 Band Mill, Husky 350, 450, 562, & 372 (Clone), Mule 3010, and too many hand tools. :) Retired and trying to make a living to stay that way. NYLT Certified.
OK, maybe I'm the woodcutter now.
I work with wood, There is a rumor I might be a woodworker.

WDH

Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

Don P

Well that's cool, I'm glad we had this little butternut talk. As I go around the NW facing rocky part of the property there's tons of striped maple, and I've just assumed it all was. Now I need to look closer. It looks like the leaf shape is the quick tell this time of year, the mountain maple has a much more serrated margin.

WDH

Yes, the mountain maple is much more aggressively toothed (serrated),. 
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

Clark

One thing you have correct is that butternut is only found near humans in this part of the world. Range maps indicate it follows the Mississippi into N MN but I've never heard or seen evidence of that. However, you can find it around houses here in town. Walnut will grow near Lake Superior but not well away from it, even south near your place. 

Mountain maple (sometimes called moose maple) is a large shrub. Occasionally it will form a single-stem but even then it's a 15' (max) ordeal. Striped maple, from what I've seen of it, has a much more defined trident shaped leaf. I think it also gets larger but it isn't found this far west.

The one in your picture is more likely a silver/red cross as the nursery industry loves the "Freeman maples". The leaves are quite ambiguous right now but the crown is a bit too vigorous to be, despite the bark saying otherwise, sugar maple. Freeman maple tend to have terrible form, develop sun canker easily and generally make a terrible tree. If you've cut it down you did the lady a favor.

Clark
SAF Certified Forester

SwampDonkey

Up this way we actually call striped maple 'moose wood', but I have seen moose  chow down in mountain maple thickets. But don't think  that they won't destroy a grove of striped maple. ;D It is a lot easier for the moose to snap those shrub maple off. They will attack red maple, want they can't consume they will rub the bark off, and ruin a small grove of red maple over winter. Moose will mostly leave sugar maple alone unless they want to scrape one up. :D

I've seen lots of striped maple 6-10" on the but end. I've never seen any mountain maple bigger than 1-1/2" where I'd make a clearing saw cut.

I have a striped maple clump in the back yard, I like the leaves, showy green flowers and the bark.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

SwampDonkey

Butternut









Butternut develop an umbrella shaped crown. And they don't make the best of yard trees unless they have shelter. High winds or ice will bring major limbs down. They are not a long lived tree, about 80 years and that's the end of it. The best butternut I've seen up here where growing with sugar maple, ash and basswood in dark loam ground. Straight as gun barrels and limb free for several feet. A lot of wild butternut now of any size are in spots difficult to cut, wet ground, steep hillsides, deep gullies, riperian zones. Not many woodlots now with decent log grade butternut. Many have died off from age or disease and it has been high graded.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

bluthum

Clark's description of the ''leaves being ambiguous right now" is a good lesson in general about identifying. Any plant in vigorous growth stage can be a tough guess, just one more reason to be leery of identification on only one characteristic.  

SwampDonkey

The leaves in his photo are out enough to see that they are not compound in nature. If you look at the photo of emerging butternut, you can clearly see they are compound, a long petiole with leaflets along attached by their petiolules. A leaf petiole is most often grooved or concave near it's attachment point.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

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