Wood ID

[ldeines]

Thought the tree was walnut  but insead of dark choclate brown the wood is more of a tan color.  Could it be pecan? how can I tell?

[beenthere]

Welcome to the forum.
How can you tell?  Well, can slice a clean cut on the end grain, look at the wood under a 10 power lens, and then key the wood.   One way, anyway.

What do you have at your disposal, and what experience do you have to identify different woods. That'll help us get some help to you.

Make a thin slice with a sharp saw blade across the grain, and scan it on a scanner with a good blow-up.
Thanks to Swampdonkey, here is how a slice of oak came out when I tried it.

[WDH]

Walnut bark is black and fissured.  Pecan bark is light gray and very scaly.  Also, on walnut, the terminal leaf leaflet on the tip of the leaf aborts early in the leaf development, so the terminal leaflet will be missing.  In pecan, the terminal leaflet is present.  Aside from the color of the wood, the arrangement of the wood cells is also different.  Walnut is "semi-ring porus" which means the the pore size gradually gets smaller across the growth ring while in pecan, there is a clearer distinction between the very large early pores and the smaller latewood pores.  The transition from early to latewood in walnut is gradual while it is more obvious in pecan.

A pic is worth a thousand words!

[Texas Ranger]

Butternut, maybe?

[Ron Wenrich]

Could also be English walnut.

[SwampDonkey]

butternut is greyish-brown or light brown lumber with next to no sapwood (<1 inch), bark is grey and furrowed.