OK, so I have never burned basswood or eastern white cedar, but this is the worst in firewoods around here. It comes up for free on Craigslist a lot. It has really low heat and it is at the bottom of my 'do not get' list. Or at the top... depending. Worst of the worst. For me, to say that it is worse than cottonwood is saying a lot. Tree of Heaven, AKA: Ailanthus altissima. Native to China and Taiwan. Invasive as all hell here, burns like crap, burning buffalo chips would be better. Its free, but I think that is too expensive for what you get.
We get a hardwood like balsa up here, I do believe the nickname is basswood. It takes forever to dry and when it is dry it burns like hemlock, even if it's free I don't think I'd waste the time and gas to cut up some logs of it. I have a few of them around here, I won't cut them down though they look a lot like oak from far away.
Although it is crappy firewood, Basswood is a carvers delight. Especially popular with duck decoy carvers.
Yup, Ailanthus AKA "stinking sumac" is about the worst. Luckily none grows in my woods. The smell is just putrid. Picked some up at a roadside score, and I didn't know what it was, but I had got some black locust from the same site, so I loaded it up. Got some help with ID on here, and decided it would make some great campfire wood for my buddy. I got it all split up, but he was slow coming over to get it, so I delivered it to him. What a good friend I am huh?
Elm here for me and popular. Popular I will get if it's easy and very little effort involved. Elm I won't take even if you cut it split and load it for me and stack and pack to the stove at the house. In fact I just pitched some elm in the holler. It was even split and seasoned. It stinks and burns like crap in my opinion the only reason I had it was my 82 year old neighbor who don't burn wood had a bunch behind his house cut up and was trying to load it by himself to get rid of I felt obligated to take it so he wouldn't have to worry and hurt himself loading it
I burned some elm that I got from the burbs here a few years ago and it actually burned pretty well. Likely a different species of elm though. I would not think there would be much of it left back east, after the DED killed most of those trees off. Poplar I agree with. That and cottonwood, commonly cross named here, are pretty crappy for firewood. The most common here is Black Cottonwood, AKA California Poplar. Stinks like cat pee when burned, not much heat, takes forever to dry. I got a lot of it after a series of tornadoes came through here 4 years ago. What a mistake that was. It is also really hard on chainsaws and hard to split. Few here have any respect for it, and it is the most common wood available for free on CL in the PNW. It is on my ignore list.
American elm, or white elm as it's also called here, burns pretty good, better than ash, the problem is it's a royal pita to split, very knotty and the grain is all twisted. While the other species, known as red elm, is relatively easy to split and actually makes better firewood, stinks really bad when it burns though.
Ah, yes, I did not have to spilt that elm. It was all branch wood so only had to be cross cut with the saw. I also had the Earth Stove then and that thing had a huge firebox, so I could get away with large splits and branches, 6 inches in diameter. Now I split down to about 3-4 inches with the smaller NC30.
I envy you, I had to drop, cut, split and stack a whole tree of dead standing white elm, made great firewood but my back was sore for ages afterwards.
I scrounge most of my firewood here from arborists in the burbs, even though I live near the national forest with gobs of timber. I haul rounds up here and all I have to do is load, unload, split and stack them. I did have some big azz maple and true cedar rounds to process late last year though. They were upward of 6 feet in diameter. I also have about a cord of hemlock still left to split. I have heard different reviews about splitting hemlock, good and bad. Western hemlock.
Hemlock here pops open with a maul easily, unless it's full of knots from branches, not sure if your breed is any different.
I think there is not much difference between western and eastern hemlock. We also have mountain hemlock here at altitude, but the only difference I can see is that mountain hemlock has larger cones than western Hem.
They're all soft wood, I know the hemlock around here becomes bug food pretty quick once they get larger. The sugar attracts all kinds of bugs, I cut up a few in my time as they make very good shoulder season wood and kindling.
After the dutch elm disease hit, it killed many elm but they are a fairly fast grower so we still have plenty. The only bad part is that we have no big elm. They die before they get very large. I did cut one this winter that was somewhere around 28" so that is an exception. Most of what we cut are in the 10-14" range. Yes, it will split hard if you cut it and split it green. The trick is to wait until it is dead and most of the bark is off. Then you can even split most of it by hand. Worst wood in this area is willow and either russian or autumn olive.
No bugs in the hemlock I have here. I have some big azz 3 foot rounds to split. I expect it to burn about like the lighter fir I have. This year was so warm I burned mostly cedar and fir this year. I saved my oak and locust for next year.
Willow is also on my 'do not gather' list. It is really hard on saws (bark traps a lot of sand and grit and dulls chains fast) and it rots pretty fast in the racks here. Not great on heat either. We have a dozen smaller native willow species here, and there are a lot of larger weeping types here as well on farms and in the burbs. I have processed and burned a lot of it, as it grew on my last property. What is Russian olive? I never heard of that.
Willow is the worst wood I have ever burned it takes forever to dry and if you leave a round on the ground it will sprout and it also smells when burning
