Couldnt ID this. Bark, wood color and twig structure have me stumped. Thinking it might be sweet gum?
Unless that's the nickname for gum or some other tree we don't have here, that's not the ironwood most know. Hophornbeam is what it's typically called ironwood. That's definitely not hophornbeam.
That sure looks like Tupelo to me, aka Nyssa sylvatica, also called black tupelo, black gum or sour gum. Good luck splitting it
Yup, I agree with you. Wood, bark and buds look like Blackgum. The hinge tear is saying strong fibers too.
Its small and the hydro is right there. I wanted to keep the tree but my friend wanted it gone. He felled it with his electric pole saw.
If it is in fact sweet gum there will be a mess of prickly round balls all over the ground. Split a round and you’ll know for sure .
Going through the hydro. I know either variety of gum is a nightmare to split and i avoid them even though i hydro split 95% of my wood. I think mr.finn got it with tupelo aka black gum. Ill be sure to post pics.
If the tree isn’t very large then shouldn’t be a huge problem. I’ve worked up some that were 40” plus and they were absolutely NO FUN . It burns fine though, just not a big producer of heat/coals. We burn some because we have a flipping ton of them and it’s my revenge for dealing with the blasted balls they drop!
I was thinking black gum as well with the limited pics we have. Black gum or Nyssa sylvatica has a branch structure where most branches will come out at 90° to the main trunk. Can you see enough of those?
Bucked it up and ran it through the hydro. Rather stringy and the "exit wound" end was rough. Thank God it was a small tree.
Glad you were able to positively identify it and more importantly, get it split. One thing I noticed about Tupelo is that the bark varies a lot out in the wild. Some trees have pronounced ridges and furrows, while others not so much. The wood itself looks just like the black gum I unwittingly "scored" a year ago from a roadside cutting. I distinctly remember hefting the log into the bed of the truck and thinking it was going to make some good dense firewood. It wasn't until I got home, bucked the log and then split it that I realized what it was. Oops
Kinda the same observations here. Back in Fall 2019 Asplundh was going gangbusters cutting here. Found what looked like ash, but it wasnt. Bucked a round roadside and it wouldnt split.
