Got a ton of these logs, split a bunch and gave it to a family member, now shifting back to splitting for myself. Is this cottonwood? Splits pretty easy, ends are “fuzzy” where the chainsaw cut. A lot of the park peels off easy when split and it’s very wet/gooey but not sticky between the bark and the sapwood. Thoughts?
I’ll get better pics. I just realized how bad that one is. It seems really really wet when it’s first cut but it sure dries quick when split. I’ve never processed anything quite like it.
The last cottonwood I got was the hardest splitting stuff I ever processed and I process a lot of elm. Most of it just shredded. Tree service guys dumped one load and asked if they could grab my trailer and load it and bring it back and park it. They told me it was maple. (I don’t let the tree services dump anymore without pictures or me inspecting first). I ended up taking the load on my trailer to the landfill…was afraid I was going to bend the beam or break a weld on the county line 25 ton.
Could be basswood or aspen as well. Out of town for work but I’ll get some better bark and split pics. It isn’t hard to split if you don’t try to sink the x27 right in the center. Very straight grained.
Cottonwood around here always smells like farts. Or manure or when you stir up mud in a swamp. How does it smell?
Looks like the poplar that grows here. There's an awful lot of trees in the poplar/populus genus. The only one I can Identify rather readily is bigtooth aspen as we have quite a few here. That does not look like bigtooth aspen bark .
I don’t remember an off putting smell. Probably some sort of poplar. Still burns. It is kind of odd to split. Can’t split it from the middle but if you whack it about 3” toward you and then 3” away from you from the center it splits perfectly. The middle absorbs the hit like a dense sponge.
I doubt the logs in the OP are cotton wood. I grew up around cottonwood trees and turned a fair pit of cottonwood into fire wood. The bark on full grown cottonwood is much coarser than what is pictured. Cottonwood is in one of 3 stages, either green and sopping wet, briefly dry and burnable, or decomposing mush. Doesn’t take long to get to the latter stage if it is in the weather. I can attest to the stink of green cottonwood as mentioned above.
Haven’t had a chance to get better pictures yet. Got slammed with snow, cold, work, family emergency. Just from the species mentioned here I think it will dry and keep us warm next winter. Might just have to sweep the chimney an extra time!
Here are a few more pics. I think I have a couple different trees. Some stunk, some didn’t. It all split about the same so probably closely related.
Thanks everyone! It will all burn eventually. Since it sounds like it rots semi quick when not split I’ll take care of all this first. I did throw one rotten log in the woods in the fall. The rest has been decent.
One thing I've noticed about cottonwood/poplar/aspen bark is that its stringy, especially after it sits for a while. I usually get rounds processed rather quickly. Just another way to ID it.
I agree that it looks like a couple different trees. The middle picture 100% looks like bigtooth aspen to me. The bark on the lower trunk gets furrowed as they age, but the upper trunk and limbs stay relatively smooth. I've gotten plenty of it over the years and find it to be decent firewood. Better than half punky ash at least.
