Not really, it split a little harder than ash. Hard to tell in the second pic but it is really yellow with a dark red streak in the center.
Hard to tell from those pics, but the bark and the yellow wood are a pretty good match for locust. I've seen it get some black rot like that after its been on the ground for a long time. There's also a type of fungus that can attack weakened or dead locust and that could cause the staining/rot.
I'm on my phone, but it looks like hedge to me. I'll look later on the puter. Any thorns? Green balls that look like monkey brains?
Ok, still looks like Hedge to me. Any more pics? Maybe of the tree? A Leaf or two? ( lukem ) any thoughts?
The bark and yellowish color have me thinking Mulberry, but not seen much red in Mulberry, so just an educated guess here.
I'm leaning more toward mulberry. It is pretty uncommon to have hedge with grain that straight. The red is probably early stages of rot and/or fungus. I burn more hedge in one winter than most do in their lifetime, and it almost never splits that clean and straight.
I know this is mulberry because I cut it from a living tree. It is not at all the same. The whitish outer band on all of my rounds is missing on the one in question and I have no dark center at all.
Hedge has male and female trees so not every tree will have the softball size fruits. I am leaning hedge but won't rule out black locust, but the wood looks a little too yellow and the bark isn't as deeply furrowed as I would expect.
Mulberry,the extreme center of lots of older slow growing trees (no matter how big the actual size) can quite often have those red shaded core/star checking.
