Cherry splits relatively easy IME. You should try some elm or gum... . Even hickory gives you a little resistance but not terribly hateful. Wait you smell the smoke coming from it.
Black cherry out here gets pretty twisty which can get frustrating. The only really bad time I had splitting cherry was some long-dead and petrified stuff, but also one of those overplanted ornamental weeping cherry trunks. Very stubborn.
Other than the bark those split nice and clean. Its hit of miss here. It can be very twisty and stringy or nice and straight clean splits. Common tree on the edge of fields.
One of these. I’m sure you’ve seen them around. It’s my understanding the weeping branches are grafted onto a straight trunk for a rootstock but I could be wrong on that. Not native, that much I know for sure.
That looks like some ornamental cherry or black birch. Ive never seen cherry bark do that and the piece on the ground in the first picture looks pretty birchy.
Those ornamental cherry trees can be a pain to split....so can black cherry if it grew in the open and is crooked/twisty....but the smell mmm!
Whatever this stuff is, I've never dealt with it before. The property owner called it cherry. From the few leaves I had, a plant ID app called it sweet cherry. Either way it's primo stuff.
