I'm in SE Michigan where we don't have native conifers other than eastern red cedar (technically a juniper). But people do like pine and spruce as yard trees. I've split and burned a lot of white pine, which is fairly unimpressive. And I've split and burned HUGE spruce rounds, which was even more unimpressive. But I have also gotten quite a bit of this stuff from tree services, which is a surprisingly decent firewood. Is this red pine? It has scaly bark, is fairly heavy, and is very sappy. It takes longer to season that white pine, but it burns great once bone dry. It seems heavier than white pine both green and seasoned. I throw a split on a bed of coals and it burns like diesel for a while. After the surface sap burns off, it keeps on burning at a moderate rate for a long time. Whatever it is, it's my favorite soft wood. I wouldn't load a stove up with it, but mixing a little in with white oak / mulberry / locust is a great combo.
Pinus sylvestris Called Scotch Pine in the US, is my guess. The more orangish colored bark is what I'm looking at. Red pine has a more reddish hue to it.
I think Stumpy75 is right. There is a lot of it in your area Johathan so have at it! We cut off a lot of it several years ago but still have plenty.
Looks just like my Red Pine. I had two huge ones taken down next to my garage two years ago. I like to burn it in my sauna stove. Burns hot , fast and little ash.
Thanks for the info. Based on google image searches, it very well could be Scotch pine or red pine, although I tend to agree with you that it might not be quite red enough for red pine. My photos were taken at night with a cell phone flash so the colors might not be very accurate. Maybe I'll snap a daylight photo later today. And I see lots of threads on FHC and other sites of people confusing the two...
I think Stumpy75 is right you have Scots or Scotch pine there. They are sometimes difficult to distinguish from a red pine. The red pine is a native in the Eastern part of the US while the Scots pine was originally native to the UK. The easiest way to tell the difference is a red pine will have long needles and a Scots will have shorter. The Scots pine will also have a more orange appearance to the top 1/3 of the tree bark. I run into a fair amount of beetle killed Scots pine here and it’s actually good firewood. It’s not primo stuff, mind you, but I’ve observed better performance than soft maple in my ideal steel stove.
I should add -- the big orange sections of bark in my photos is where the grapple that loaded the logs ripped off the surface layer of bark. The bark is big gray scales with the orangish-brown color only showing slightly between the scales. You only get the big orangish-brown spots when you rip off the surface layer.
Do you have any smaller branch wood and is it the same color as the bigger trunk wood? If that is the case you have red pine.
Many people can't tell hardwood species by bark. Imo, softwood/pine/spruce/fir/ect. is on a whole different level. Like hardwood leaves, conifer needles tell more of the story. That peice in your second picture looks like it has some nice tight grain. Wish i could be more help but only way I've learned conifers are by the needles.
Either would likely make better firewood than white pine. Red and Scot’s pine are half again harder/slower cutting than white
Yep white pine is a close approximation to spruce. In fact I’d almost rather have to work on a spruce than white pine. For as light as it is spruce is pretty tough. You look at a white pine branch funny and it breaks off and ruins your day.
Barcroftb Jeffrey Svoboda Unfortunately the tree service chips the branches and even the trunk up to at least 12" diameter (HUGE diesel chipper). I actually get most of their wood chips as well, but it's hard to match up needles with logs since most loads of wood chips come from many different trees. I enjoy the wood-species-guessing game, however, so receiving mystery logs is fun.
I am fortunate to live next to a mixed hardwood forest with white oaks (burr, white, swamp white, chinquipin), northern red oak, black oak, pin oak, american elm, red elm, beach, a wide variety of hickories (shagbark, shellback, bitternut, pignut, mockernut), basswood, cottonwood, hophornbeam, hornbeam, hawthorn, cherry, silver maple, red maple, sugar maple, black maple, funny looking apple trees that grew from the seeds of deer bait, and there used to be lots of white and green ash... All in only about 20 acres of forest. I have gotten pretty good at hardwood tree ID by watching the same trees year round, seeing the bark, buds, leaves, and seeds of the same trees, year after year. Just when I'm feeling good about my hardwood tree ID skills, I got a load of logs the other day and thought: awesome! something in the white oak family! Turned out to be maple. (Sad because of the mis-ID, I'm happy to burn any maple). One thing that makes tree ID hard based only on bark is how bark changes as trees mature. A very old hardwood (100+ years) often has quite different bark than a 20 year old tree of the same species. For example, basswood has smooth gray bark for the first few decades of life, but eventually develops dark brown bark with deep ridges. Some of the soft maples undergo a similar change. And the same tree can have very different bark at the base vs. 50 feet up. Then there's the rose family, where trees like hawthorn and pear can be indistinguishable by bark alone. Nice score of pear, right? No, it's hawthorn.
Then you cut one and the grain looks like this, and you start to wonder about the long term effects of the drugs you did as a younger man... Just joking, that's 80 million year old oak from Oregon.
Yeah i have fun trying to id trees just by bark. Like you I've learned from watching certain trees year after year on my property. My first thought of your picture was a good sized dogwood. Haven't cut any hawthorn or pear myself. That looks pretty sweet. Would be interesting to turn something outta that on a lathe.
