Tree / wood ID

[Karleisenmenger]

I was a suburb dweller most of my life.   I now live on 30 wooded acres in S. Indiana and I have trouble identifying tree types, especially when there are no leaves.   I recently found a downed tree in the woods and have recovered it for firewood.  Here are some pictures of the bark and a cross cut of the trunk.    

  

[beenthere]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum. 

Looks like northern red oak (quercus rubra). 

Virginia Tech Dendrology Fact Sheet

Also
Red Oak | The Wood Database (Hardwood)

[WLzM1A]

  Defiantly oak, looks like what we call black oak here in TN.

[Ron Scott]

Yes, to northern red oak.

[firefighter ontheside]

One way to recognize an oak is the very visible medullary rays radiating out from the center towards the outside.  To tell if its a red oak or white oak, make a very clean cut on the end grain and look very closely with either a magnifying glass or a nice clear close up photo and look at the pores.  The pores in white oak will be closed and the pores of red oaks will be open like tiny straws.

[Don P]

 Make a ~1/16" thick cookie and hold it up to the light. Red oak will be a pretty lace and white will block the light.


These were in my gallery. This is a white oak, heart is lower left corner, bark is upper right corner. Rays are diagonal upward radiating from heart to bark. Oaks are ring porous, the annual ring of thin walled porous vessels in white oak are blocked by tyloses, you can see those structures in the vessels here. You also cannot blow through white, or your whiskey won't leak out because of those blockages.


 

This is red oak, heart is lower right bark is upper left. I think you are actually looking clear through some of those vessels to the white backing of my scanner. There is a little bit of tension in this stick, see the G layer in some of those? Cool, never noticed before. Red is good for nail kegs and other slack cooperage but not for liquid tight cooperage.