With no leaves , is there anything I can look for to identify?! No distinctive smell when cut. I will get a piece tomorrow and split it and share the photos. Maybe that will shed so light ?
I would have leaned that way but the smell when cut didn’t sell me on it. I know it’s dead but I have year plus old cherry that’s still has a distinct smell.
It looks like there were vines tangled up in the limbs, maybe grape vines? Get some clear close ups of the twigs, showing the branching structure, the terminal buds, look for any kind of seeds/pods (or nuts) that might still be clinging on.
In forestry school, buds are taught as the main way to distinguish species, cause leaves, bark etc can be variable to a degree. So posting pics of some limbs with buds (if you can find some, may be an issue if it's been dead long) is a good idea.
... I'm curious too ... especially of a branch and the splitting characteristics... its definitely different than the "norm" of a tree of its species... But for some reason I keep coming back to hackberry... The bark ain't quite right, but has characteristics of it... the knodes are characteristic I've seen on hackberry... Definitely a fairly fast growing species by the growth rings...
Nothing conclusive I guess , for me anyway but I am calling it hackberry. One other in the area but otherwise all pecan and ash around it. After looking at the split , the pith and the bark on a smaller branch I think it has to be a hack of some sort.
Those western hackberry trees look a lot diffent than the ones we have here, but this seems to be what it is. Hackberry | Nebraska Forest Service The local hackberry trees here look more like this: https://i0.wp.com/blog.greatparks.o...ter-Trees-Common-Hackberry-1-scaled.jpg?ssl=1
That last picture looks just like the hackberry around me. I think I went through two pairs of gloves on the last hackberry I processed.
I don't know. I know what it is not: Osage Orange, Pecan, Cherry, or Oak. I would have said 100% not hackberry until the last pic and that split. Nothing on the trunk says hackberry. I have never seen a hackberry with bark like the bark on the trunk of this tree.
