Author Topic: Dead Standing Mystery Tree (Read 1549 times)

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #40 on:** January 05, 2021, 03:42:29 PM »

No, elm is more like the smell of horse urine.

High_Water · « **Reply #41 on:** January 05, 2021, 03:57:47 PM »

Quote from: stavebuyer on January 05, 2021, 03:06:15 PM

If you scrape/chop/peel a little bark off it will be burnt orange in color and have an aroma similar to root beer if it is sassafras.

I have seen sassafras hit 36 DBH. Rare but happens.

I cut a couple inches in with a saw but didn't scrape the bark back, but the outer few inches of sapwood was fairly rotted where I was messing around at the base. I can't recall from memory the exact smell but root beer didn't come to mind at the time, I just know it was fairly aromatic and not unpleasant, sorry I'm not good with smells. I can say for sure it wasn't cottonwood swamp/sewer water, and definitely not horse urine-ish either.

KEC · « **Reply #42 on:** January 05, 2021, 10:10:09 PM »

I think the fact that it has been dead for some time is going to change the way it smells. Fresh ash is not unpleasant, maybe could be described as a nutty smell. I can still remember many years ago my father drilling holes in fresh sawn ash to make holes to put bolts through to make wagon beds.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #43 on:** January 06, 2021, 05:41:44 AM »

All told, every species of wood smells different. If you saw and plane a wide variety of wood, it is engrained in your sniffer cells. And it smells different when it ferments and spoils to. Rock maple will smell like cow poo by the time it is seasoned for firewood.

Nice smelly white pine fresh, will turn to a distasteful mould smell when it turns to denim pine.

For us in North America, end grain is more definitive than finger prints.

Finger printing is not as reliable as you think. Many scientists have knocked it down and some judges.

aigheadish · « **Reply #44 on:** January 06, 2021, 07:38:49 AM »

All y'all are infinitely more knowledgeable than I on this kind of stuff, but my immediate thought, with the thick bark was black walnut...

I don't know what the difference is between Texas Ash and Ohio Ash but my Ash doesn't look anything like this at all. The bark on my years dead ash trees likes to flake off in relatively big chunks and as someone else said the branching doesn't seem right. Also, on the Osage Orange tip, am I to understand there is Osage Orange that stands up straight? We have a fair amount of it around here and it all seems to get to about 8 feet high then stretch mostly horizontally.

KEC · « **Reply #45 on:** January 06, 2021, 07:01:25 PM »

Speaking for myself, I have stopped short of saying that it is ash. Bark resembles ash. And, again, long dead wood smells much different from fresh. I'm anxious to hear the final verdict.

bluthum · « **Reply #46 on:** January 07, 2021, 11:24:40 AM »

Any answers are mostly guesses with the info given. Looks like the tree has had a very challenging life which makes things like bark pattern not all that definitive. If the inside wasn't so hollowed out osage would be a good guess but then again the inside may have burned out rather than rotted. It's irregular shape is typical for the osage oranges I see. The cut off limb looks considerably like a cut off piece of dead osage might look.

Also the wood is very remindful of dead persimmon but no way for the bark, or at least how the bark looks in my world. That's one of the suckers deals about bark, it can vary a great deal in appearance from location to location or even site differences. Persimmon is a rot fast species and sometimes it will hollow out similar to the pic but otherwise no bueno for a match.

So I'm not guessing but if I were there I'd want to take a few whacks at it with a sharp axe, through the sap wood and expect some definitive evidence to emerge. Also it might be definitive to id the fungus growth, some are specific to what thay will grow on.

As for the fire wood aspect if it is osage orange there will still be some rocket fuel there.

Southside · « **Reply #47 on:** January 07, 2021, 01:17:26 PM »

Has anyone thought to just ask the tree what it identifies as? Might claim it's a SYP.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #48 on:** January 07, 2021, 01:23:45 PM »

Yeah, but it's fun to guess. I'm sure a lot of us have educated guesses, even if they are wrong.

Tacotodd · « **Reply #49 on:** January 07, 2021, 02:53:17 PM »

SS, if they only COULD speak. But do you really want trees to talk! Think of what they could tell about us, as individual persons. There goes MY 5th amendment rights. 🤪

Southside · « **Reply #50 on:** January 07, 2021, 09:12:23 PM »

So are you saying Tree Squeaks are not real?

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