Mystery log

[Bibbyman]

 

A customer brought in a couple of logs from one blown down tree today.  He thought they may be white oak because they were white inside.  They are not white oak.  I’m not sure what they are.  I suspected some kind of non-native yard tree but the customer said it was a “wild” tree growing along a stream on a farm. If it is a native tree,  it’d have to be native to mid-Missouri. 

The wood is the same color of cream white from inner bark to center with no darker center wood at all.  It is much heavier and the bark type does not look like basswood or hackberry.  The bark is about 1/4" thick or maybe a little more and is generally dark brown to black in color and somewhat smooth. There was one leaf still on one log.  It was of the simple type – like an elm leaf – about an 1-1/2” long and 1” wide.  These logs are 8' long and about 16" dia.

[Furby]

Close up pic of the leaf?
How bout one of the bark?

[Gary_C]

Maybe a American Holly.

[Brian Beauchamp]

My guess is, from what I can tell, cedar elm. I'd like to see a pic of the leaf and a better pic of the bark.

[LeeB]

Doesn't look like the cedar elm I'm familiar with.

[Bibbyman]

I'm sure the one leaf that happend to be on a little sprig on the one log is gone to the wind.  It was pretty dry and just crumbled.

I've never heard of a cedar elm before.  Would it be something native to Missouri?

[LeeB]

Cedar elm has pretty much the same shape leaf as american elm, only much smaller. The leaves are about an inch long by half an inch wide. I don't know how long those logs have been cut, but in my experiance the wood tends to take on a reddish hue after it ages a few days and most of them I milled did tend to have a noticable heart to them.

[SwampDonkey]

Is the wood ring-porous?

The wood is not brown enough for hard elms.

So, the bark isn't gray or brown then? Rules out all the white woods I know.

Was thinking silver maple or white ash, or hackberry, maybe even persimmon (very small, irregular dark heart).

[tonich]

Is the wood ring-porous?

The wood is not brown enough for hard elms.

So, the bark isn't gray or brown then? Rules out all the white woods I know.

Was thinking silver maple or white ash, or hackberry, maybe even persimmon (very small, irregular dark heart).

Too many guesses, eh?   

[Ron Wenrich]

Could the leaf be part of a compound leaf?  Of course, the leaf doesn't really have to be part of that particular tree.

I'm thinking it might be Pawlonia.  Non-native, but grows in the wild.  Another one might be Ailanthus.  That one grows in abandoned fields.  The stream could be not much more than a trickle of water. 

[Phorester]

looks like a hackberry or sugarberry to me, but that's a wild-ass guess from this picture taken at that distance and your description.

[woodbeard]

Boxelder? It does like to grow in places like that.

[Tom]

Paulownia would account for the whiteness but not the weight.  It's light  and very soft to the saw.

Do you grow much black gum there?  That wood remains rather white in a wet invironment, it's heart wood will darken, eventually, to deep brown or almost black and its leaves are simple and almost look like a cherry leaf.  It's bark begins to look like your picture when the tree gets old.  The wood is locked, hard when dry and moderately heavy. Splitting with an axe is almost impossible.

[SwampDonkey]

That was a guess I was tossing around to Tom. I found out that it quickly oxidizes on exposure, like a peeled apple,  and I wasn't sure of the bark.

[solodan]

Bibby, by the looks of  that picture, it appears that the heart is slighly darker. Are you sure that the leaf was part of the tree, or could it have been a parasitic plant growing off the trunk?

[Bibbyman]

I've been in and out deer hunting.  So far its one shot, one kill. 

I may get up the gumption to go out and take a couple more pictures. 

The leaf was on a little sprig left hanging on the second cut.  That was the only leaf left.  I don't even remember holding it.  The guy that found it pulled it off and flattened it out.  As I said, it's about 1-1/2" long and maybe 1" wide – round on one end – pointed on the other.  I don't remember if it had sawtooth edge or not.

The tree grew in the flat land about a mile from a town that was established in about 1820.  It could have been a yard tree gone wild. 

I wouldn't recognize any of the trees you have named.  If they are native to our area, we call them something else. 

Maybe when I see the owner he can come up with a branch with leaves.  That’d sure narrow down the possibilities.

I looked up cedar elm on a couple of sources.  They are not native to Missouri but they will apparently grow here and have been used for yard trees.  The are native to east Texas,  north Louisiana, and south Arkansas. None of the references I found showed what the inside wood looked like.  A picture of one had bark much rougher than what’s on these logs.
 

[Gary_C]

I doubt that it is an elm. Far as I know all elms have white sapwood and redish-brown heartwood.

Holly is an evergreen with elm like leaves that have prickly looking points on the sides.

Really need a better look at that bark.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah I wouldn't even consider elm. Not brown enough. Another thing that would help us is to know if it's ring porous like oak and ash or diffuse porous like maple. Find that out easily on the end grain. Well, you know that anyway. A lot of the species I mentioned can have interlocked grain like elm though, except ash and maple.

[Brian Beauchamp]

After looking at it again and zooming in on the pic, I'd say it's definitely not cedar elm. Somebody said Tree of Heaven...I believe that's the most likely.

[WDH]

I think that it might be Ostrya virginiana, hophornbeam.