I saw some wood down in the wetland area between a couple of meandering streams near the house today. I've never cut it before, and I have no idea what it is. I'm not used to the smooth bark trees so I'm kind of lost... Worth cutting or not worth my time? It's really close to home, but I don't want to pick up a pain in the butt load. Anyway, it looks like this: (some dried up leaves in the second picture if that is helpful...)
Pretty sure thats beech. EXCELLENT firewood with lots of btus. You made a good find. Cut splits and stack it and youll be very happy when you burn it. Ill take it in a heartbeat over oak and havent scored any in a couple years.
Well I'll be a son of one of them! LOL Thanks for the ID, Brad. Should have thought about beech as there is a ton of that growing close by, with lots of huge ones just north of us. I've had a pretty good string of roadside finds the last few weeks. Half a cord of Black Locust, half a cord of Bradford Pear and now what looks like a bit more than a half a cord of Beech (once I get it CSS at the house...) All cut with an electric saw attached to a Ecoflow battery, loaded in my car's back seat, and hand split. A minimalist's dream! But cutting in 97 degree temps has kinda sucked...
Doing anything in 97 degrees is nasty unless it is in the shower. btw, I read yesterday that ocean water off the florida coast reached 101 degrees! Now go get more beech.
I've got a ton of beech, and a lot of it is sick with BBD. Agreed that it's real good burning. BUT, I hand split my wood, so beech sometimes tries my patience....
I'm going to stray from the pack and call that Yellow Buckeye. Especially since it was in a low and wet area. Fight me? lol Yellow Buckeye (Aesculus flava)
We'd love to see pics of your finds. Inquiring hoarders wanna know. I thought you Southern folks didnt mind the heat? Heck T.Jeff Veal makes firewood in those conditions all the time. I work outside and not a fan of the heat and humidity. May go cut a load in the next few days even though its hot here too! Being wood hoarders we're a special kind of crazy.
Yep, looks like beech to me. Need to get it split fast, down here it goes punky fast. What part of Alabama are you in? Yep, I'm getting used to the heat again, took me awhile this year. Got to 98° at least yesterday. Hauled a couple loads home yesterday... Even wore my PPE...lol... Tree service had dropped it, we got the 3 main trunk sections We dropped an oak yesterday morning...
Actually when I lived in Illinois (southwest part of the state in a low river valley) it was usually hotter in the summer than I've seen in my 30 years in Bama. We commonly had upper 90s and low 100s up there with extreme humidity, but the heat didn't last for months and months like down here. By the end of August I'm tired of that stuff... (Winter makes up for it though!) When I lived near the border in Arizona it would be hot in the day (110-115) but the "dry heat" thing is real. We would wander around the riparian area until we got light headed, then squat under some mesquite for a few minutes and be fine. It was hot but not oppressively humid like the midwest. Then at our elevation (5800 feet) it would drop to the mid 50s by 9pm. I'll have to take some more pics as I cut. Usually I run in and cut, split, and stack up what I get as fast as I can, then realize the phone never made it out of my pocket! (And by then it's dark... ) But I'm going to dip into that Beech in the next few.
I'll have to get on that beech soon then. I had to get the brother out of the hospital today, so I only had enough time to move up some of last years cuttings to make room to stack it. We are up in the northern part of the state, near Huntsville close to the Tenn. border. Great place to live, but it's starting to get crowded... We get about 58-60 inches of rain a year so I better get that stuff up off the ground soon. Your loads are "a bit" larger than mine... LOL!
I'll be the contrarian and say it might be sycamore. The blotchy lighter colors in the bark tell me. If it's American beech and laying in a swamp and it's beech, it's going to be rotten. Of course this is a 1500 mile away guess.
Beech is good stuff! I’ve always had good luck splitting it too. That’s some nice looking bark. The stuff by us is never that smooth; gets very bumpy from some type of disease. Still burns good though. Hope your brother is doing OK and is on the mend.
I burn about 80% Beech. It's great firewood. Shows more BTU's than oak on the charts and I have no problem drying it in a year.
T.Jeff, you might be stunned by my operation... LOL! I got home in just enough time to go grab one quick load of the beech this evening. You can see the difference in my load size and yours... And my Log Wagon (It's a full one! Hope there aren't any weigh stations between here and the back yard!) I got a couple of carts full in that load, but ran out of light before I could do any splitting... And of course, the firebreathing chainsaw, with the mighty Ecoflow nuclear plant! Only used 4% of the battery to clean up the area and get these cut... New chain, but was a little bit loose by the time I was done... Still well over 3/4 of the pile to go - as I get time... (How very impressive!)
Yeah, driving by the pile I thought that too. But once I got up close it wasn't hard to tell the difference. I have 4 Sycamore trees in my yard that I planted about 28 years ago. They are in the 80ft+ height range now, so we have lots of blessed shade in the summer. We had none when I moved in here and I needed to fix that fast...
