Lucky find

[Dodgy Loner]

I've been in Athens for training all week, and on Tuesday we met at the State Botanical Gardens.  After we got off, I walked around the gardens for about an hour when I came up on a tree that had apparently died and been cut into firewood.  I noticed that the wood was very yellow, so I took a closer look to see what it was.  My suspicions were confirmed by a small tag on the stump.  But before I tell you, I want to know what your suspicions are

Here's some pictures.  I got just a few of the nicer-looking logs, mostly for turning bowls.


The "butt log", if you can call it that, was more than 12" in diameter and 19" long.  I decided I would make some nice boards for some special projects, so I took care to mark out exactly what I wanted out of it.


Sawing a log this small on the WoodMizer ain't easy, but the results were well-worth it.  I got a few wide flat-sawn boards, several quarter-sawn boards, and two thick, 3" turning blocks.


So, what do y'all think it is

[LeeB]

redbud? I really don't have a clue. Just a wild guess.

[Tom]

athenian bulldogus Holly

[Gary_C]

At first I thought you had found some cull pieces of Aspen pulp logs, but with the color I'd guess yellow poplar.

[LeeB]

I think Tom is on the right track. Dogwood?

[SwampDonkey]

Bark sure looks smooth and gray, like beech.  I wouldn't be surprised with that white sap, and yellowish heart and gray or brown streaks, that it was..........oh.......um........yellow wood perhaps.

My second guess would be yellow buckeye. Depending on whether that dark streak is stain or natural and if that tree was rather young and fast grown before the bark got scaly.

[Lanier_Lurker]

I was thinking beech myself, but that seems too easy.

I think Tom may be right.

American Holly?

[SwampDonkey]

Holly has ivory white heartwood, distinct of any NA hardwood. I think Dodgy's chunk is semi-ring or ring porous. I can see stump rings at least in the sapwood. Kinda eliminates buckeye to, unless those streaks are in the early wood.

[zopi]

Looks like beech to me...

[Gary_C]

Pawpaw

[SwampDonkey]

Hmmm

[SamB]

Looks alot like birch from my perspective? Probably not a common tree in the south, but maybe it's transplant

[SwampDonkey]

Good thing Dodgy found a label on the tree so he tell us after we guessed about every tree growing down there.

[Gary_C]

After cutting many hundreds of cords of Aspen pulp, I get used to the many different looks of what is generally refered to as "popple." There are three species normally included in the term popple and they are Quaking, Bigtooth, and Balm although normally the Balm is sold separately. They all have similiar appearances, yet vary so widely that sometimes the lower part of a Bigtooth can look just like a Red Oak.

Those pieces Dodgy has look just like some of the smooth bark, green tinged popple that I see. And even that stained greenish yellow wood could be seen on some aspen, but I knew it was not going to be that easy.

So my first guess of YP was just a wild guess and I could have thrown in Yellow Birch too.   
But now I'm sticking with Pawpaw. 

I was fairly certain the samples were in the Magnolia family but this brings up a question. The Magnolia, Poplar, and Birch families all have similiar appearances. Are they all related somehow or perhaps derived from one species many years ago? Could that why some of the popple family looks more like the magnolia family than the grey barked aspen family?   

[DanG]

I'll go with Magnolia for my W.A.G.

[Dodgy Loner]

Lots of good guesses, but SD nailed it with his first.  It's yellowwood.


Yellowwood is a well-named tree, as you can see, and one of the rarest native trees in Georgia.  I don't think I've ever seen it growing wild in Georgia, but I've seen in occasionally in the Smoky Mtns and in the Ozarks.  It's used occasionally as an ornamental, but this was the biggest specimen I've ever seen in cultivation.  It's a diffuse-porous wood, but the rings are still pretty prominent.  The pictures don't do it justice as to the actual color--it's the yellowest wood I've ever seen!

[Tom]

The bark looks a little like "Sweet Bay", if it's a magnolia, but the grain of the wood doesn't.  Most magnolias don't  have a real straight grain.  It looks like it grows with knobbies all in it so that a board, flat sawn, will look much like a topographical map.  I guess there could be some that have straight grain, but mine don't.

Holly is noted for being pure white.  I've seen some color in it, but it is rare.  Magnolia's have all kinds of colors in them from purple to red, to green and eventually turning brown.  Grandiflora, especially an old one, might look like you spilled a paint store in there.  

I see Dodgy Loner has identified it for us.  I never heard of Yellow Wood before.

Is that a date at the top of the tag?  Is "Bed 8" a nursery identification or an identification of where it was growing on the campus?

Is the name CLADRASTIS LUTE?
(Reminds me of a Rastus joke)

I'm going to post this anyway. Hate to waste all of that typing. 

[Gary_C]

Ya, but SD was just describing that wood not naming it. You see he called it yellow wood, not Yellowwood. Doesn't count.        

[SwampDonkey]

semi-ring to diffuse porous, like walnut.

Two ww's together isn't proper, if anything needs a "-" . 

Tom       Gary thought I was winded.

[SwampDonkey]

Species latin name must have two conflicting authorities I see? The wood tech and dendro also call it C. kentukea. I looked at the micrograph example and the end grain looks like walnut. It's definitely not ring porous, but with a narrow band of large pores (two rows), that disperse and stay large for half the ring before decreasing in size by the time they reach the end of the ring. That's why the rings are so distinct. Semi-difuse. You can give argument for each type when you see the end grain.