Uses for poplar

[thedeeredude]

I guess I'll let you go this time

[Lanier_Lurker]

It is about my favorite tree to saw.  It has a nice lemony smell when you take off the first slabs.  The heartwood sometimes has vibrant color, always green, sometimes with black, yellow, or vermillion streaks.  It spalts well.  I had a log that layed on the ground through this spring and summer.  I opened it up Sunday, and the color was amazing. 

Some large over 30" pieces that I have busted up for firewood have even had purple and violet along with the green and yellow.  It is quite amazing at times - but do these colors hold true during drying and finishing?  How I got these big pieces is a sad story.

The clown that moved in 2 doors down from me about 3 years ago had the largest and most dominant yellow poplar in the immediate stand area taken down.  It went right up beside his deck and was perhaps the most perfectly formed yellow poplar you could ever hope to see.  Maybe 40" on the stump, clear and straight with little taper to over 70', absolutely perpendicular, and over 120' tall.  When I came home from work that day and saw what he had done it really ruined my day.  He'd had it cut into 3' sections and just tossed over into a pile on the Corps property.  And then the fool was foreclosed on less than a year later and was gone. Oh that that tree could have not had an encounter with such a person.

Unlike some of the other yellow poplars that have been cut down in the area this one did not send out any stump sprouts.  That surprised me.

I happen to think that yellow poplar is underrated as firewood.  You would not want to burn *only* yellow poplar, but mixed in with oak, maple, and hickory it does great.  I always keep some pieces of good dry yellow poplar around to liven up a fire that has gotten sluggish.  I have no problems at all with it popping, unlike some of the white oak I have that pops like a fireworks show.

[rickywashere]

we have them here by the forest full ....  they are very nice to work with but in my area they are mainly sold for peeler logs unless they are huge .. anything over like 20 inches you can get prolly 400.00 / 600.00 per thousand .. however some local mills use them as mining materials.. crib blocks, fly boards  ect .. but i helped last year tear down a old house that was built around 1930's and it had some that where almost 30 inches wide that looked as good as the day they where nailed up beautiful wood .. i tried to get hold of some for a table but the guy was dead set on nailing them on his bard ////// what a waste//

[WDH]

but do these colors hold true during drying and finishing?  oak I have that pops like a fireworks show.

Without care, I believe that the color will fade.  The bright green of the heartwood fades to a light brown with exposure to light.  However, I suspect that a freshly sanded piece that was finished with a clear non-yellowing finish would retain a good bit of the original color.

[Quebecnewf]

What type of popular would one find in eastern Quebec. We have it in this region further in to the north none near the coast .

Quebecnewf

[SwampDonkey]

Up your way Quebec, you would get balsam poplar P. balsamifera (resinous buds and balm smell) on the coast and both it and trembling P. tremuloides inland. They both occupy wetter ground, while largetooth likes it high and dry like northern hardwood. Two of the widest ranging aspens of Canada are balsam and trembling. You don't get largetooth out that far north and no Tulip Tree (yellow poplar). Largetooth doesn't form pure stands around here and it changes orange-red in the fall like maples.

[chevytaHOE5674]

Up this way we have P. tremuloides on fairly well drained northern hardwood sites. Generally it is better quality than that found in the lower ground. P. balsamifera is almost 100% of the time on low, poorly drained sites, often growing with tamarack, black spruce, cedar, etc.

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, tremuloides will grow on hardwood cutovers here to, but I make a point of calling it a wet aspen because it's mostly on wet ground, especially when we are looking in northern Canada which is over most of it's native range. Large tooth we consider a hardwood when spacing with brush saws. It doesn't seem to be so full of cankers like trembling. We have been thinning 100 acres of trembling and the fir in with it is garbage, the moose have any small trembling broken off and killed. The ground is a poor site for most anything except cedar and spruce. The water is close to the surface. No sign of largetooth anywhere in this 100 acres.

[chevytaHOE5674]

Interesting, down here our trembling is generally in good form and not many cankers. What little bigtooth we have is full of black cankers and the wood is usually punky and junk. Always interesting what species do well where.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, for the most part of the NB lowlands trembling dominates after a harvest. You can drive along the highway around Moncton and go north toward Miramichi and Bathurst and see mostly trembling aspen, sick looking stuff. We do get some good groves of trembling but only on high ground and then there is still a lot of dead tops, cankers and conks in the bole. Largetooth doesn't seem to take well to fire ground with shaly ground, it seems to get target cankers.

[Quebecnewf]

Now that we know the type the next question is is it good for anything ??

Quebecnewf

[SPIKER]

I wanted to ask about the POPPLE not sure of its regular name not Tulip Popular but the less worth while stuff, (I have hybrid popular and popple) I have found that it does not make a good burn for firing Syrup on, gives the sap an off taste. (ruined a batch last time I made some)   it does burn OK but steams a lot and gives off rank odor. if it is not completely dry.   would work well for starting fire as it does seem to fire up quick...   I have some in the 24~30" range straight with a few branches 30~40' logs easy.  though they seem to die off at this size...  have not had any milled but really like how my old boss did some tulip popular on a back woods bar, (clear 30"+ with flat saw board & baton boards in the 24" wide these were nailed up green & left to split which really added to character of the inside of the fully insulated cabin/lounge around woods bar...)

Mark

[SwampDonkey]

Some mills don't want the balsam and others will take mixed loads of trembling aspen and balsam. At times it's worth more than hardwood for pulpwood market. We have sold aspen veneer before, but it's a not much a bump in price, maybe $20 a cord difference for the extra bucking, sorting and as some would put it "just plain in my road on the yard"

Makes a quick fire or kindling, other than that it's not used much in this area. I've never seen anyone use it for a building, but apparently some folks do. We have spruce and fir, and it's what folks prefer. Spruce more so, they would rather not use fir either if they could help it.

[climbncut]

I live in a house that was built in 1863, and a couple of the rooms have poplar floors(95% sure that's what they are) and they still look amazing. Even with some rooms having cherry and pine floors, the poplar are my favorite.  Not sure when the last time they were sanded, but some boards still have a dark purple look to them and seem to be in great shape.  I would def recommend using poplar for flooring or paneling. It has always seemed to be an "interior wood" to me. Can't wait to get a hold of a good log and see what I can do with it.

[Magicman]

I've cut Poplar to be used as siding outside and paneling inside.  The ceiling over me right now is 6" V-grove.  We used "Pickleing Stain" (a whitewash) which is the only treatment that it has had.

Here are a few pictures.  Probably would be better taken in the daytime with natural light instead of a flash.

 

[shinnlinger]

The latest Fine Homebuilding has an article where they stain poplar to look like Cherry.  Looked pretty easy to do. 

What the call Poplar around here is quite different from the polar I knew in ORegon.  THe stuff here is also used for interior paint grade trim and trailer decks as it drys so light.  I milled a nice stick into stickers yesterday and thought to myself I was wasting a good looking stick.....

[SwampDonkey]

What the call Poplar around here is quite different from the polar I knew in ORegon.

Black cottonwood mostly, a small population of quaking aspen east of the coastal range. Our balsam poplar back east is about the same stuff as the black cottonwood. Both have sticky buds and stink.

[WDH]

Magicman, that ceiling is perfect!

[Ron R.]

Tulip popular is a little soft but makes a nice staircase. Just finished sawing out a shop pattern and most of it is out of popular. My house is more than a hundred years old and most of the studs are popular and look as solid as if they were put in recently. Makes good wood for barn doors as they are lightweight. I am sure there are hundreds of uses for popular.                   Ron R.

[Heywood]

I had a large tulip poplar with double trunk come down after the wind blew a soft maple against it.  The root system is very shallow for so large a tree.  I’d worry if one was too close to the house. Big Tulip Poplar trees are a fond memory of mine as a kid.  On a hot summer day, I can recall walking into a very large stand of them, and it was like walking out of the heat, and into a cool autumn day.  (They built a four lane highway through that stand of trees, and the house my grandfather lived in.)
It definitely burns well if it is dry and you want a quick fire to start the heavier stuff.  (Even my wife can get a good fire going if I’m away.) Since I have a large supply from that downed tree, I consider myself fortunate.  We have electric baseboard heat, and I have the thermostat set for a half hour in the morning.  By that time I’m up, and have the wood stove going before the electric heat runs more than about fifteen minutes.  I like my own TP trees, and their blossoms that produce a really, really good honey that is very dark and delicious if not blended by the bees with wild cherry that blossoms about the same time.  I’d certainly go for tulip poplar honey over the generic clover they sell in markets and tout as somehow special.   
As long as I’m here, I do have a question but I don’t think there’s a good answer.  I cut downed trees from farm land to clear roads or fields.  Mostly soft maple or cherry but sometimes oak.  I don’t even bother to carry some of the other varieties away, but about a month ago, I got a call from a friend who had a tree come down on a leased farm blocking the road.  I took two saws with newly sharpened chains and on the first cut, I knew I had something special.  This stuff was hard.  It had about half an inch of rot that replaced all the bark and the tree had been standing, apparently until the roots rotted out and a good wind blew it into the road.  The color of the cut was a medium to dark tan and since the tree was about sixty feet high and about thirty inches in diameter, I gave my saws a workout.  I’m still trying to split that stuff.  I know I’m up in years but I’m not that decrepid, and I use a fifteen pound maul.  When I get a section with a knot, I even have to use the saw on it to get it to some size that I can handle.  I would rate the stuff as, at least as tough to handle as hard (sugar) maple with which I have had some experience.  My neighbor thinks it’s walnut, but I have never cut walnut so I can’t say.  I cut a slab off to get a good look at the grain.  Is there any reference that can identify a wood when there is no bark, leaves, etc. to tell, or do I just take all the guesses and pick one.

BTW -  the tree wouldn't have made good lumber because it's riddled with tiny holes made by some sort of insect that can handle that hard wood better than me.