What would you guess?

[Jeff]

At first glance I guess something I see all the time here in the eastern u.p. then i looked up and had no clue. What would you say?



 

 

[SwampDonkey]

No leaves, but looks like ironwood bark (O. virginiana). The bark is in strips and the ends of them strips turned up.

[Tamarack]

1st look northern white cedar 2nd look lilac

[Jeff]

 

 

 

[Wattwood]

I'm liking the common lilac option. Syringa vulgaris. If so, they're bodaciously big...

[Al_Smith]

Looks to me like a gnarly old ironwood .

[Wattwood]

Common lilac would have been a typical old fashioned shrub to flank a sidewalk leading up to a house years ago. They may have been added in the early part of the last century when the house was built. The suckers got pruned to keep it from growing into the walk and then time allowed the single leader to turn into a small tree. A working theory but I'm sticking with it.

[SwampDonkey]

The leaves look like lilacs, Jeff. I've never seen the trunk of a regular lilac get any bigger than 4" in 100 years. They have multi trunks like a clump of alders, even the white ones. It's possibly a Japanese hybrid one. We have a real old one in the cemetery that is probably 4 feet across. It's only been the last 20 years or so that I have even seen nurseries here sell any Japanese ones. A lot of stuff came up here eons ago from Boston and surrounding area as families left here and worked down in that area, so stuff was brought up here before customs stopped anyone from bringing in rooted plants. Bristly locust was another common tree brought here, but our winters will often kill it dead in a few years, not frost hardy. The stuff will sucker like aspen though. :D

[mike_belben]

Lilic was a very common planted bush in 1970s new england for sure.  They were everywhere when i was a kid.  Cant remember the last time i saw one.

[Al_Smith]

Lilacs it seems to me tend to grow in clumps eventually getting to about like a hedge rows .Individual shoots propagating from the roots seldom get larger than 4 inches .They might  get 15 feet high though from my observation .
My dad some time in the early 60's transplanted little shoots from one lilac bush that over a 35 year period had clumps nearly 6 feet in diameter in a row nearly 100 feet long  and in some places were tight to one another so much you could not get between them with a lawn mower . That BTW since my niece took over the home place has been thinned out .Saying that I must admit when in full bloom it is a sight to behold with a pleasant aroma in the air .

[KEC]

A photo of the leaves would help. Bark suggests lilac, but I've never seen one that big in diameter. It is actually good firewood if it has a little size. The recomendation that I've heard for pruning is to prune just after the flowers bloom. Cut out 1/3 of the stems and take out the biggest. Do that every year and you'll have flowers every year and it doesn't get too big.