Wood ID

Any help with an ID on this wood? I will get a bigger piece and better photos if necessary. It's winter dormant here in SE Michigan so no leaves.

The bark on the entire trunk looks like small square armored plates. Somewhat similar to green ash, but those are all dead, and the wood is definitely not ash. The wood color reminds me of hawthorn, but the bark is not like any hawthorn I have seen.

I heated up a piece of green wood in front of the stove and no noticeable smell.

Wood is fairly heavy like most green wood. Growth rings are tight, but that's normal in a dense forest. It came from a wet, old growth forest dominated by silver maple and sugar maple along with some elm, hickory, oak, and black cherry.

There are more trees like it, some quite large, if I want them for firewood. Just got to figure out what it is.

My guesses are either some type of pear or dogwood based only on the bark. But I would appreciate some help!

 

Persimmon?

 

Could be, although I'm not sure if those are native around here. I just found some photos of black tupelo (sour gum) and that looks similar also.

 

Try splitting it. If it’s black gum, throw it back in the woods!

 

The persimmon areound here usually has darker bark than that. Kinda reminds me of black gum, but not familiar with would could be up there

 

Looks like black gum miserable to split even with a splitter

 

Growth rings not as tight as I originally thought. Heartwood has a pleasant sweet smell. Split easily, but I need to split some longer pieces.

 

Looks like an old birch
If not maybe Apple or a type of Wild Cherry

 

Definitely not black gum after seeing it actually split and not just tore

 

Bark reminds me of dogwood, but they seldom get that big.

 

Dogwood might not be far off.

I cut one down that was dead from a guys yard, it was 15” at the base but it was the largest I had ever seen.

 

This one was only about 12" at the base, but there are some bigger ones nearby. Tomorrow I will get some more photos of the ones that are still standing.

Seems to be some very wet wood, as I managed to get a few drops of sap to drip off it when I was beating it with my Gransfors small forest axe (a nice little axe, but definitely not a splitter).

 

That sure looks like pear to me .

 

I Agee Pear great btu,s

 

That is not gum if it splits like that bark does not look like bradford pear but there are many varieties of pear and i looked at some pictures of different ones and the bark is very close

 

Yeah, that is too smooth a split to be a gum...and some different color inside...

 

I thought this too, the pears around here do have that “alligator” bark as well as some small apple varietals but those tend to color more reddish with age. Some of these apple trees are pretty old at that point. It’s too light colored m to be any kind of plum...

 

I think I figured it out. But first, here are some more photos of the tree:



Here is a bigger one -- standing dead -- 18-20" at the base -- with lots of sucker branches:




This tree is only found on the edge of my woods, about 15-20 feet from a farmer's field. There is an old, dilapidated fence line very close by (fence wire circled)




I saw the tree in question side by side with another tree, and that is when things started to make sense...



The small tree on the left is some sort of hawthorn. And I now believe that the large one in the back -- which is the tree in question -- is also a hawthorn. Hawthorn is in the rose family, just like pear trees. So those of you who thought it was a pear were on the right track. Cherry is in the same family, and the wood does look a lot like wild cherry.

Around 100 years ago, farmers around here used to plant hawthorn along fence lines. If you've ever seen the thorns, you understand why. And the trees in question are all within 15-20 feet of an old fence. I'm not sure if the hawthorn bark changes that much on old trees, or if I have two different types of hawthorn. The many small suckering branches low on the trunk are consistent with hawthorn, which can grow as a bush or as a tree, depending on its environment.

So hawthorn is my best guess at this point. If so, great firewood. I've been cutting the little ones with scaly brown and gray bark for years. The wood seasons pretty fast and burn a lot like hickory with slow, deep red flames that seem to last forever, before leaving tons of coals. So if the bigger trees are also hawthorn, I've got a few cords of very good firewood to add to my hoard.

 

Here is a well seasoned chunk of the smaller hawthorns that I commonly cut. It is about 6" in diameter.



Although the bark looks different, the wood is nearly identical to the mystery tree:



As many of you know, the bark of old trees often looks quite different than younger trees of the same species. I am thinking that hawthorn is such a tree.