Ok maybe it's just me or the way it's drying or something but I understood these both to be silver maple. The first two pictures are some 2 year old stuff I got out of a log load. The second two are some splits from last weekend off a 120' bigun' that was cut the end of January any thoughts weather they are both silver or? I've got some sugar maple cut also and it's not that I know that for sure.
First bark pic looks exactly like my autumn blaze maples in my backyard. Second bark pic is definitely silver.
Really hard to tell without leaves.. theoretically autumn blaze is not a sugar maple.. it's a hybrid to have brightest red orange foliage.. tap it and pull a sugar % its lower... up here there sugar aka rock maple and everything else is softer... but that's because the hard maple makes lighter syrup... maybe some one else can speak to btus...
If I remember right the log load came off a lot clearing job in a fairly swampy area cherry, ash and that soft maple but just curious because I know of black, silver and red maples just don't really know the difference
Sugar maple is the only really high btu maple. All the rest( red, Norway, silver, even box elder, are mid grade stuff. They all burn well though, so it's all good stuff, and all make heat. Nearly all the BTU charts show Sugar maple to be 24 mbtu's a cord.
I cut 2 silver maples at my mom's house and I can see the same kind of bark in your pictures all through stacks of that stuff. First picture looks like branch wood and 3rd looks like trunk.
That's kind of what I thought because I know for a fact that the third and fourth pic were from the 40" trunk rounds I busted up a couple weekends ago
That's my experience too. If I can get all the dead and down trees on my woodlot,l this winter, there's a certain leaner sugar maple that will be in my stacks. However every time i get on the woods I notice another down or dead standing tree that takes precedence. I'll deal with it.
Yep, it's maple! In my experience, silver and sugar both have very pale heartwood, nearly indistinguishable from the sapwood. I also find silver and red maple bark to be very similar. So, given the reddish appearance of the wood, I kinda like it for Red. In some places, reds are also known as "swamp maple", due to their tendency to grow very well in low-lying, swampy areas; and I see that on my land as well. That being said, I don't think you'll notice too big of a difference between the soft maples in terms of drying time and heat output. It's one of my favorite flavors..
