Several small understory trees like this from a tornado blowdown area. The trunks remind me of a muscled up animal. The trunks have ridges all over, making it look like muscly. The leaves look a lot like elm or ironwood. It's pretty heavy and dense. I got them thinking prolly good firewood. Hope someone knows. Maybe 20 to 30 ft tall trees. Biggest I have is maybe six inch diameter. Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
Hop hornbeam, iron wood or musclewood. All the same . Great firewood. Seasons in a year. I have some on inventory... Great score!!
That appears to be a beech of some sort. Hop hornbeam is not smooth like that. This is hop hornbeam bark I'll be collecting a little bit of it as I saw a couple dead ones on my land yesterday.
+1 for looking like american hornbeam have some in a corner of the property and they are all full of cankers They also tend to sport deer antler rub marks. Probably the size of the tree trunks more than anything.
It's american hornbeam or often called blue beech. Great firewood! Needs to be protected from dampness or it can go punky on you. This was a big one, maybe 10" at the base. Here's a pic of some of mine. It crazy heavy...
American hornbeam, I know it better as blue beech. Never gets real big here, but I saw some bigger examples when at Backwoods Savage 's GTG's, he has quite a bit in his woods.....
That's the key..... Hophorn grows here too, I used a piece of a trunk to make the handle for my cant hook. That piece was around 5" diameter and had probably around 60 rings in it! Very dense, strong stuff.
Yes, it is blue beech. Some call it musclewood. Technically it is in the hop hornbeam family. There are a few who call it ironwood and perhaps rightly so as it does seem to be about as hard as iron. Also, it tends to grow in a clump. It does not keep well so if you cut some, burn it within a year.
Agree with the beech. I have several on my property and the bark and leaves are a perfect match. I have a few that are smaller and couple larger that have a lot of bumps and uneven surfaces on them.....they split hard....very hard. Good stuff though if you get it dry.
Very cool, American hornbeam? Also called musclewood? It sure looks NOTHING like hop hornbeam, surprised they are related. Musclewood, well, that sure fits based on my thread title! I am very pleased to have you guys make this ID, now I know what American hornbeam looks like and what this is! Yes, I found some clumps. I find it interesting you guys said it would go punky, that surprises me, as it is so dense! The bark isn't very thick though. What about ironwood, a.k.a. hop hornbeam... does it go punky, too? Are there ok in a stack? Need to cover?
Hop hornbeam, aka ironwood it's pretty long lasting, but obviously keep it dry and it will last. Unfortunately many use the term "ironwood" interchangeably, and this really shouldn't be the case as the only ironwood is the hophornbeam. That, and the hornbeam thing with only the"hop" as the name differentiation. Here's a little reading, Eastern hop hornbeam and American hornbeam Eastern hop hornbeam , (Ostrya virginiana) is in a completely different genus than Blue beech, aka musclewood ( Carpinus caroliniana) . Then again, I'm no botanist, although I did take some 5 credit botany classes in college and I've stayed at Holiday Inn Expresses in the past.
Yes american hornbeam and american hophornbeam are not the same tree although the leaves look a lot alike. unfortunate and confusing similarity in names ironwood is unfortunately a nickname or common name applied to a long list of trees Ironwood - Wikipedia
We always called that ironwood (which i guess isnt the correct name)and yup it never got that big. Great firewood though.
