Yesterday, I went to scout out an old honey hole and found a nice pile of mix, recognized some black locust, a couple white oak limb cuts, a small round of what looks to be apple or cherry and then this brush. Yesterday’s haul(didn’t have the trailer then but I’ve been blessed with a truck so filled her up) Today’s haul, truck and trailer well loaded.
The leaves look like holly which is halfway decent firewood. Kinda tough to have one in the back yard if you like walking around barefoot as the leaves persist year round on the ground.
Would that be American Holly? We had a forest ranger come out to our property when we bought it to give us some sense of what kinds and condition our trees was and he said the fact we had quite a few big American Holly's meant we hadn't had any wild fires recently because they area apparently susceptible to them. I've actually removed junk trees around some of the bigger ones we have to encourage their growth cause I think they're kind of cool and really stand out from the maple, oak and hickory (and damm sweetgum) we have. Never thought about how they'd do for firewood.
I think so about the ID, the holly tree is more of a bush but to give you an idea about how much it grows, it’s extremely slow. But this one obviously got some serious growing time. My dad has it as a bush and a tree. The bush started out low to the ground and about 30 years later it’s hardly much taller than me but has not grown in diameter much. The tree has about 6-7 trunks likely having been trimmed then left to grow for possibly 40-50 years because in earlier pictures, its not super tall but does tend to grow like growths like bamboo, you’ll see it swell and kink a little bit like wavy growth. Will need to show a few shots of this because I can only imagine how old it is and the way it was cut, I’m having trouble seeing the rings. I’ve heard that slower the growth the better but not always applicable.
Per the resources, Holly is just past white oak btu’s but half the drying time. I think the main drawback is that it grows so slow. I grabbed a bit at the dump recently (there wasn’t much there.) but i’ve been curious if anyone has had first-hand experience with it.
I was looking in a few threads here but holly isn’t mentioned too much or discussed here. I think T.Jeff Veal was one. Hopefully more can chime in. I noticed that bushes like laurel will come up but since its not big around or a tree, it isn’t widely used and often disposed of. Sure is hard when it dries out.
The American Holly that indigenously grows here on the East coast can get 80 feet tall and grows like a regular tree usually with a nice straight trunk. There are a lot of cultivars and imports that people have in their yards as specimen trees. I've only had some to burn in a fireplace once, quite a long while ago, and would unscientifically rate it as between red maple and oak.
The smallest trunk, farthest left is about 4-5 inches circumference. Bear in mind this may have been pretty close to the size of the other trunks when we moved into the house over 30 years ago. I’m assuming but it’s probably the one of the slowest growing woody species here in the PNW where everything else seems to rocket up and attains a height of 50+ feet and may not be more than 10-20 years old.
I meant to make a thread about it. I scored some holly couple weeks ago at the town dump. Big trunk like in this thread. I thought to myself, who the heck would cut down a holly tree! That is just wrong to me, lol. I think that even has some folk roots to it... bad luck? Anyway, the rounds I got out of that trunk are substantial and I can't imagine how long it took a holly tree to grow that big! If you have one 4 inches DBH, that's a good one. This one was over a foot, I will try to remember to measure. The wood is extremely white and pure looking. It's supposed to burn good. It splits super easy.
This place where they dump the rounds is part of a power company and I believe they may do freelance work trimming around town and then this one got the order of a total takedown it seems. I would have asked the same thing about it too. It is extremely white when split but the ends have some kind of bluish tinge to it. This is actually not easy to split and maybe being a city tree has something to do with it? They sure did noodle a bunch of rounds and some were just some crazy knotted messes that looked like french bread roll on a straight branch but with closer looks, this is the result of pruning then additional growths grew over the trimmed spot. Some rounds even showed that younger branches grew alongside the trunk so tightly there wasn’t a space in there and only by my splitter was I able to see the two separate pieces with bark on each side. Odd shaped stuff though too. I thought I’d not want to keep the uglies since cutting them again wouldn’t be safe to do. A heavyweight band saw might help...
Missed this thread. Nice looking score FatBoy85 . I like the sticker as well! Which size is that? Gotta get me some swag!
Nice score! I have heard it’s sought after by carvers and wood turners because it’s tight grained and good for intricate detail. It’s also supposed to be great firewood, please update when you burn it in a few years. Curious to know what it smells like and how it coals.
I have tried to hail one turner here but so far no reply. Might try asking if anyone will come out of the woodwork in the hobby area.... Upon a closer look since I was literally throwing this stuff in my truck, I spotted burls on these rounds and cutoffs. Mind you I didn’t cut this, tree service did but I have zero knowledge on the care of wood for turners so I don’t know what separates good from bad.
