looks like maple bark to me ... but that is just a guess ... ken

Can you show the cut side as well? Does the wood have any particular scent? Also, generally where are you?

Bark reminds me of Honeylocust... do you have leaves or twigs by any chance?

yes, it's hickory, very heavy for its size and burns great.

ctnchpr, laceyvail

Thanks! I looked up other pictures and it definitely looks like that! That explains why so much of the bark was already off... We got it free from a guy in Toronto who cuts down trees - I see this is about as far north as it grows - it would sure be nice if there's more this year!! We're used to burning ash and elm and maple.

i_like_pi

Ya, that was my guess, too.

As the old moonshine song, Copper Kettle, says, "Build your fire of hickory, hickory ash and oak..."

Agree with the poster that said it resembled some sections of honeylocust bark. But heck, with so small a sample, not a very serious inquiry!

+oM

Jeez, didn't look anything like locust to me. That bark is highly corrugated.

The pic on our right has a portion I've seen many a time in rather mature HL's. The left one looks like sugar maple. And now it's been decided that it's shagbark hickory! But this is exactly what I hate about this-now it's as if this is a competition or something. I would never not know what kind of tree I was looking at, whether sugar maple HL, shagbark hickory, on and on ad nauseum were I looking at the tree instead of a couple blocks of firewood! It's just a silly post.

+oM

The left one does vaguely look like pine to me

laceyvail A song to look up and sing later :) Ya we had oak once, it burned fast but left nice big coals, that plus hickory *would* be just perfect :)

wisconsitom the sample is so small because the winter was so long :)

OP sounds like one of Beyonce's songs to me ☺

sam_md omw lol, guess I needed all the excitement I could get! It's going to be really annoying if all I can think of is cheesy pop songs when I go in the basement now...

The bark has lenticels, which is very typical of cherry trees and other trees such as Honeylocust. I don't remember ever seeing lenticels on the shaggy bark of older hickory trees.

Heartwood color is right for older HL too. Whatever. Now I'm playing the game too!

BTW-not saying that's what it is OP, but if so, yes, honeylocust burns with a blue flame. I always took that to indicate high BTUs. Seems strange to have burned that wood, of all that grows wild around me, but with the explosion of HLs in the landscape-coupled with their often falling prey to Nectria cankers, etc.-there's plenty of it around.

+oM

treeguy123(AL 7b) wisconsitom like on birch trees? I've noticed that too, I think I ignored it because it was confusing lol. The wood inside is noticeably bright yellow on a lot of pieces. And now that I remember, my husband said he thought he saw the same bark on trees when we were in Kentucky, with big pods hanging off of it! But then another time he thought it smelled like barbecue sauce, although there's a mix of wood in our basement, and this is the first year we're going to use it all up. Also I came back to mention that there wasn't actually that much bark off of it, that I didn't think it was "shaggy bark".

Re: the Beyonce comment, I can't help thinking of Annie Dillard's poem "The Man Who Wishes to Feed On Mahogany", forgive me for posting it

The Man Who Wishes To Feed On Mahogany

by Annie Dillard

Chesterton tells us that if someone wished to feed exclusively on mahogany, poetry would not be able to express this. Instead, if a man happens to love and not be loved in return, or if he mourns the absence or loss of someone, then poetry is able to express these feelings precisely because they are commonplace.
-Borges, Interview in Encounter, April 1969

Not the man who wishes to feed on mahogany
and who happens to love and not be loved in return;
not mourning in autumn the absence or loss of someone,
remembering how, in a yellow dress, she leaned
light-shouldered, lanky, over a platter of pears-
no; no tricks. Just the man and his wish, alone.

That there should be mahogany, real, in the world,
instead of no mahogany, rings in his mind
like a gong-that in humid Haitian forests are trees
hard trees, not holes in air, not nothing, no Haiti
no zone for trees nor time for wood to grow:
reality rounds his mind like rings in a tree.

Love is the factor, love is the type, and the poem.
Is love a trick, to make him commonplace?
He wishes, cool in his windy rooms. He thinks:
of all earth’s shapes, her coils, rays, and nets,
mahogany I love, this sunburnt red,
this close-grained, scented slab, my fellow creature.

He knows he can’t feed on the wood he loves, and he won’t.
But desire walks on lean legs down halls of his sleep,
desire to drink and sup at mahogany’s mass.
His wishes weight his belly. Love holds him here,
love nails him to the world, this windy wood,
as to a cross. Oh, this lanky, sunburnt cross!

Is he sympathetic? Do you care?
And you, sir: perhaps you wish to feed
on your bright-eyed daughter, on your baseball glove,
on your outboard motor’s pattern in the water.
Some love weights your walking in the world;
some love molds you heavier than air.

Look at the world, where vegetation spreads
and peoples air with weights of green desire.
Crosses grow as trees and grasses everywhere,
writing in wood and leaf and flower and spore,
marking the map, “Some man love here;
and one loved something here; and here; and here.

Looks like honeylocust to me, too - especially the piece on the right, but as +oM said, hardly enough detail present to be certain
I'm a hickory 'nut', just doesn't look like C.ovata to me. Exfoliating bark does not necessarily mean 'shagbark hickory'.
That said, while I've not burned much honeylocust, I would not classify it as a dense, long-burning wood...so, maybe it's not...

Ya know lucky, (I'm sure you do know!) HL is a fast grower, and as such, probably not all that dense of wood, although I have been surprised on occasion at the tightness of the grain on big old bottom hunks off of trunks. I always wanted to make a bass guitar body out of it for some reason. Never got around to it and now, I finally quit touring and playing, so doesn't really matter anymore, but interesting properties for such a fast grower. Most any I've ever burned was just thrown on an outdoor fire but one brother-in-law reported the blue flame in his wood burner. I dunno.

Considering how over-planted that thing is, IMO, any that gets burned can only help matters, lol!

+oM

Not to be thorny about it, but my first reaction when this thread started was honeylocust, too...

Huh huh huh, I get it. And Horster, you obviously didn't mean Gleditsia triacanthos 'inermis', did you? ;^)

+oM

A thorny issue, but what sticks me w/a sharp point is that does strike me as honeylocust.

I guess a couple nice blocks of firewood are better than a sharp stick in your eye!

BTW, somewhere up yonder, I called this "a silly post". Well Original Poster, I didn't mean to infer that you are a silly person. It's fine and dandy to ask whatever you like on a forum such as this. I just knew-and it was confirmed-that a certain competitiveness would take hold in our answering. I myself contributed to that, lol!

+om

yes, i would say it's hickory, very heavy for its size and burns great. wish they made fencing out of this stuff

+oM,

While black locust in well-noted for its density and rot-resistance (BL posts with lots of heartwood make great, long-lasting fenceposts), my limited experience with HL - other than cursing them and having to maintain a constant vigil to keep the seedlings that are always popping up in my pastures cut off and poisoned - has been that HL fenceposts will rot off almost as fast as an untreated pine post would. NOT a suitable replacement for BL!

Wait, what did I say, lol. Not making any claims for honeylocust beyond my initial thought that one of the pieces of wood which are the subject of this post resembles some sections of that species' bark I've seen before.

+oM

I'd say HL, too. I have plenty of them and Hickory on my place and it resembles HL more closely, at least to my eye. I burn it HL for firewood and it does alright, not as good as oak or hedge but close. My hickory is reserved for the smoker.