Hi all, Long time lurker, first time poster here. I am in northern Vermont and need help with a wood ID. It seems like it should be simple given bright orange wood ( think carrot orange), but I can’t seem to track down an answer. The tree in question grows in a spooky/overgrown fashion - trunks and limbs going every possible direction. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated!
Hello and welcome, WB. Can't have enough New Englanders here. I have no clue on that wood. But, I'm sure there'll be lots of guesses, and you get to pick which one to go with.
Welcome Wooden Beard The bark looks like it is in the birch or cherry family. Just a guess. Someone should be along to be able to recognize it.
Welcome to the FHC Wooden Beard Nice to have you join us. Some great folks on here. Not sure what you have there. Maybe Canadian border VT can chime in.
The leaves in the first pic dont seem to 'match' the bark of the teees in the 2nd and 5th pic. Like fishingpol said, the bark looks like cherry or some kind of birch. Confirm that those leaves are on the tree shown in the last pic? Are you sure the split pieces are from a similar tree? Is there bark on the split pieces?....if so please post a pic of the bark side...
Hi all, Thanks for the words of welcome and the helpful responses. I don’t think I posted the most helpful pictures in the world so I’m trying again here. To answer the questions above, the leaves and the bark are from the same tree in my original post. However, the birchy, paper like bark seems to occur on the younger growth trees only. The bark on the older trees looks significantly different (see pics - I found a better tree to use as an example). The split I took a picture of had no bark so I uploaded a different sample that has bark. Thanks in advance for your help!
That bark is either pin cherry or silver birch I see both in pics and welcome to the FHC Wooden Beard !!
Welcome! I'm from out in Dakotah Territory so not completely in the same realm of trees but... Out here we have an invader called Buckthorn that when scuffed has orange inner bark like that. I've never cut and split it as it is a scrubby bushy tree in the wild here but I have seen trunks in them upwards of 6" diameter. The tree true to name has some small thorns.
I'm leaning towards cherry. At the very least, some kind of fruit tree. It sure doesn't look like a black cherry you'd find out in the wild. Is it a dead tree? If it's a live cherry it should have blossoms of some sort this time of year. What about the location? Out in the woods, or at an old home site? If it's on an old home site, it could be some kind of ornamental or non-native tree introduced to the area which would explain the sprawling limbs.
Howdy and welcome , looks like cherry to me also. Greenstick - If those 1"+ Buckthorn thorns are considered small in your neck of the woods - guess I will make a detour. Around here they will take out various tires and pass right through the bottom of a shoe.
It doesn't look like the wild cherry we have in our area at all. The leaves look a little like the hawthorne or crabapple variety we have here, but that bark is something that I'm not at all familiar with. I'm stumped. Welcome. Hope you enjoy our pictures and tales. Lot's of knowledge from the folks here and we're looking forward to hearing of your adventures as well. Maybe one of the ID threads in the resources area may assist. Here's a link to one of them: Leaf Morphology & Indentification 2015-09-20
I've been thinking about where I have seen those leaves and small spike tip. I actually have them here out back. If I recall they had dark berries last year. The ones here don't get more than maybe 10 feet tall.
Our cherry here doesnt look like that pic with the mature bark, not sure if it could be a different variety of cherry? I was gonna guess something like osage orange, or some kind of weird ornamental type tree...
Welcome to the club. Lots of great folks here sharing knowledge and humor. I don't know about your tree.
Thanks so much for all of the helpful responses! What a great community here. I think I may need to keep an eye on the tree to see how it flowers and what the fruit/berries look like to make a final determination. Unfortunately we have tons of this stuff choking our woods so it won’t be hard to do. Looking into the suggestions so far I think cherry is possible, although my money is on buckthorn right now. All of pictures and descriptions I can dig up on buckthorn seem to match well and it is definitely an invasive species here in VT. I will report back to the group once I can make a final diagnosis!
