A friend of my wife's had a couple trees go down in a storm. Tree guys are coming today to deal with them, and she wants to know if she should have them leave the wood. The bark doesn't look like cottonwood to me, but the limbs look cottonwood-ish. The leaves are just budding and seem to have some heart shape. I have never seen these trees in the summer. What am I looking at here?
The only common trees I know of with vaguely heart-shaped leaves are cottonwood, linden (basswood) and bigtooth/quaking aspen. I don’t see aspen or basswood there so cottonwood is my guess. I noticed the bark on cottonwoods varies a lot depending on age and location too.
The more I look, the more I think it's possible that it's a cottonwood on top and a basswood on the bottom. I'm also not exactly sure what's attached to what! It's tough to tell much from the leaves when they're just budding out.
Either way, that would be a lot of work for middle of the road firewood IMHO. I took cottonwood once and would take it again in small quantities, but only if it required minimal effort. That’s just me though.
I'm not volunteering for any cleanup. The only question is whether I want the tree service guys to stack the big logs on the driveway for me to pick up. Logistics would be pretty simple, but if I say "yes" then I'm committed to taking whatever it turns out to be.
That’s not a horrible deal then, if you don’t mind taking on that much shoulder wood in one shot. They chip the limbs and leave you logs to work with (hopefully they chip everything that’ll fit in their chipper). Some people wouldn’t mess with it but plenty others have no problem taking on the “junk” wood. I’m plenty guilty of it myself
Good news, bad news update. Good news is that the tree guys say the one on the bottom is an ash. Bad news is that we didn't manage to identify it.
Yes, sort of. She had them leave "a lot." This is what was there when I arrived: It's touch to convince people that you really do want the whole works.
Greetings all. This is my first post so I hope you don't think I'm a know-it-all. Lots of experience with ash vs basswood vs poplar (cousin to cottonwood) since both are abundant here. His truck load appears to be basswood judging from the bit of fuzzies on the cut ends and the bark not making diamonds. Provided the pictures post in the same order they uploaded it'll be basswood bark, basswood end cut, ash bark and poplar bark. Thanks for having me here.
Thanks for the welcome. I'm quiet but listening... Which wood might be stinky? I never noticed any stink in those woods. Might help if my smeller worked better.
Nice to meet you fellow female hoarder Cottonwood is stinky to me, reminds me of urine, it smells while/agter splitting. I had covid almost 6 months ago and my I can hardly smell either, sweet smells lotion, hair conditioner etc. are like rancid chemicals Cute kitty cat!
