So I picked up this wood from a guy down the street back in the summer, he had already removed the limbs so I couldn't identify it from the leaves. But I was told it was Silver maple, and by the way the trunk had split and fallen I had no reason to think otherwise. But I've heard others say silver maple is easy to split, but this stuff is a bear! My Fiskars wouldn't touch any of it, and even the hydraulic splitter rips it apart more than splitting it. So any ideas? I'm pretty sure it's still maple, I just don't know which type.
Well it's silver or red, but it's almost impossible to tell the difference from just the wood and bark. Some younger branches *might* be able to tell the tale. Red seems to get what I call a "shattered glass" effect to it, when the bark is just beginning to develop the furrows. It almost looks like someone through a baseball through it at the branch intersections. Silver stays smoother. Guess I would lean silver, because the red I've worked with, appeared redder. Those yardbird maples can be very difficult to split. I see a lot of "twisty" grain there.
Yep.....silver maple. Bark gives it away, silver is flair than red maple (at least in my experiences).
Silver maple, I split a yard tree up that I couldn't even touch with the fiskars, hunkered the 27 ton down.
Thanks guys. I should have stuck with my gut, but a buddy of mine (who I've never seen ID a tree wrong) told me I had red maple and I started second guessing what I had. Looks like he's been wrong at least once!
I got a load of silver from my tree guy, and the trunk was tough to split with my axe. Smaller rounds and branches were easy, but the bottom portions of the trunk had to be noodled into submission
I'd also say Silver but you never know with these yard-tree hybrids. I've got three Maples in a row, first one is a Sugar. The next one looks almost identical, bark and leaves, but drops helicopter in the spring instead of fall.
