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Southern Yellow Pine ?

Started by woodhick, December 04, 2008, 01:41:48 AM

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woodhick

I live in central West Virginia.  We have a pine around here that locals call bull pine, black pine, red pine, and Virginia pine.     I have heard the same tree called all of these names.  It is not a white pine or Hemlock, that I know for sure.  Would these fall into the "southern yellow pine" catagory?
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Jeff

My reference here lists as common names: Southern pine, southern yellow pine, Florida longleaf, Florida yellow pine, Georgia yellow pine, slash pine, loblolly pine, shortleaf pine, American pitch pine, Gulf coast pitch pine, longleaf pitch pine, longleaf pine and longleaf yellow pine, Carolina pine, northern Carolina pine, meadow pine, salt water pine, spruce pine, she pitch pine, swamp pine, bassett pine, black pine and foxtail pine

It also states that Virginia pine is not a southern yellow pine, but closer akin to the northern and western pines.
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SwampDonkey

Yeah, red pine is also Norway pine. Virginia pine, is just that, but looks almost like our northern jack pine. If you didn't know the little details you might call jack pine a Virginia pine. ;D

The southern yellow pines also have similar volume and tangential shrinkages when drying, around 12.2 and 7.6% respectively. However, relative densities differ a bit.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

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Tom

Southern Yellow Pine is a catagory that includes only four hard pines.
Pinus taeda (Loblolly Pine)
Pinus echinata (Shortleaf Pine)
Pinus elliottii (Slash pine)
Pinus palustris (Longleaf Pine)

Loblolly is sometimes called Bull Pine because it reaches such great girth so quickly.
It is also called Black Pine sometimes, but usually Black Pine is reserved for Pinus serotina, which is also called Pond Pine and marsh pine.
Virginia Pine (Pinus virginiana) is a smaller pine that sometimes grows to saw size and may be found in your area, but it isn't a Southern Yellow Pine.
Red Pine (Pinus resinosa), also called Norway Pine, is found in the N.E. U.S.A. and you are on the southern end of the range.  It could be Red Pine but that is still not a Southern Yellow Pine.
Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa)is called Bull Pine, but doesn't occur in West Virginia.

The use of common names can certainly confuse you when trying to identify a plant, can't they?




Dodgy Loner

I have also seen pitch pine (Pinus rigida) included in the southern yellow pine category, but it makes up a very small percentage of the SYP harvest (<1%). 

As the others said, Virginia pine is not a southern yellow pine and should not be sold as such, but that doesn't mean it won't make good sawlogs.  A tall, straight tree with few branches will still make good lumber. :)
"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey." -John Ruskin

Any idiot can write a woodworking blog. Here's mine.

thompsontimber

Yes, pitch pine also marketed as southern yellow pine, and have also seen it pulled of once with table mountain pine.  Georgia Pacific plywood guys out of Prosperity, SC bought a tract above Marion, NC that had quite a bit of Table Mountain pine.  They weren't even sure what they were looking at in the beginning, but decided it was of sufficient quality and characteristics for their product and bought same as any other southern yellow pine.  As for Virginia pine not being a southern yellow pine, that is true also and not supposed to be marketed as such, but its done quite a bit in the heavy Virginia pine areas of the south...you should see them picking out the nice clean logs bought as cheap VP and milling it with the shortleaf and loblolly.  Round these parts, its a southern yellow pine.

WDH

Virginia pine might not be a Southern Yellow Pine, but it is a yellow pine.
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thompsontimber

yup, doesn't get much more yeller! ;D

SwampDonkey

Yeah, even wild jack pine makes nice lumber. It grows thicker after fires, so it limbs up well. The plantation jack pine they have planted are way too limby and that causes them to become crooked as well. I believe they should be planted 3-4 feet apart and thinned, but it's too costly for an under valued species, so they plant them like spruce 6-7 feet apart. They grow fast though. None grow in my area naturally, I planted a few around on the old farm and in my yard. The yard ones are too open, thus limby and crooked. The ones I planted in small patches have not done too badly. Heck they grew where spruce wouldn't, because of the tall weeds.
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1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

DanG

This looks like just a dandy place to clear up something that may have been a misconception on my part.  I had understood that there were the four MAJOR Southern Yellow Pines, but there were others in the category that were too rare or isolated to be considered major.  An example would be the Sand Pine.  I'm not challenging anybody here, I just want what little knowlege I have to be correct. ;) :P
"I don't feel like an old man.  I feel like a young man who has something wrong with him."  Dick Cavett
"Beat not thy sword into a plowshare, rather beat the sword of thine enemy into a plowshare."

Dodgy Loner

I will try to shed some light on the subject, but I may just as well be muddying the waters.  There are, indeed, four major southern yellow pines: loblolly, slash, longleaf and shortleaf pines.  However, pitch pine and pond pine are close relatives of loblolly pine and are often of sufficient quality to be harvested and sold along with the other SYPs.  Virginia pine, sand pine, and jack pine are another group of closely related species, and as I understand it, they are more closely allied with lodgepole and ponderosa pines, which are known as western yellow pines.  I've seen samples of virginia and sand pine, and in my opinion, they appear more similar to the SYPs than the WYPs, but they are clearly yellow pines.  I think they are somewhat weaker than the other SYPs.  There are also a few uncommon species, such as table mountain pine in the Appalachians, and spruce pine in the coastal plain, that are yellow pines.  Table mountain pine is most closely related to loblolly pine, and should therefore possess characteristics similar to the other SYPs.  I'm not sure what spruce pine's closest relative is, but I've read that it's weaker than the SYPs, so it is probably more simalar in wood properties to the WYPs.  Does that help? ??? :)
"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey." -John Ruskin

Any idiot can write a woodworking blog. Here's mine.

DanG

Yes, that helps quite a bit.  Perhaps my love affair with the language is getting in the way of my curiosity about trees, but it seems that the phrase, "major SYP" implies that there are minor SYPs. ??? ::)  Logic tells me that if it is a yellow pine that grows in the South, it must be a southern yellow pine ::), but we all know that logic doesn't always apply. :D :D

FWIW, I have sawn quite a bit of spruce pine, and once the bark is gone I can't distinguish it from Loblolly.  The old timers around here call spruce pine, "turkey pine."  Is that a common term elsewhere?  Of course, those same old timers refer to longleaf as yeller pine and all the others as white pine. ::) :D
"I don't feel like an old man.  I feel like a young man who has something wrong with him."  Dick Cavett
"Beat not thy sword into a plowshare, rather beat the sword of thine enemy into a plowshare."

SwampDonkey

Depends on what you call west, some call the west line the Rockies, for others is the beginning of the prairies others call the Mississippi R the west line and probably a few other notions. For me it starts at the Manitoba border. If you ever drove from Kenora Ontario to Winnipeg you'll see why. And it's not a myth that you will cross over the Mississippi River in Manitoba while traveling Route 2 highway. ;D Jack pine grows east of the Rockies and is pretty much equal in geographic area in Ontario, Quebec, NB and NS as the northern prairies, and southwestern Yukon territories around Great Slave. Just a smidgen falls into far northeastern BC. Some people think East is Ontario and everything beyond is void and mythic. :D

Lodgepole growing on a swamp perimeter is very dense, the axe unless real sharp will glance right off it. I've seen guys injure themselves cutting falling corners and not using the proper stance when they tackle one of those petrified specimens. It was a very common injury with new "green horns" on the crew. Well not petrified, but real hard to chop into. ;D

Not trying to cause split ends on anyone's hair do, just taking my seat in the crowd. ;D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Tom

I'm not a technician, specialist or dendrologist by any means, but I've heard that a sawyer who saws up "black pine", when used as a term to identify Pond Pine or Pocasin Pine, can find himself on the street.

Pocosin, or Pond pine, (Pinus Serotina) definitely hasn't the strength or stability of the other yellow/hard pines.  I can smell it as soon as the saw hits the wood and know to back off or its tension will roll it right off of the mill.  I've even tried to cut fence posts out of it, a product it should perform good in, and had it bend and twist so bad that my 4" square turned to 6" at the middle of the cut and then to 2 or 2 1/2 at the end, surprising me as it broke the final fibers and jumped onto the mill bed as the blade exited.   Pocosin smells very strongly of lemons to me, usually has a wide growth rings, is prone to knots and has a very dark bark with quite small plates.  The sap that exudes is chalky and white when it dries.  It's wood is inferior to Loblolly (the least desirable of the SYP's) and it doesn't produce enough sap to have made it a target for Naval Stores.   

Those times that the grain was tight enough to fool me , lasted only long enough to get the sawblade into the wood.   You begin to learn its fallibility's pretty quickly.

I still think it has a place in the market as a fence post.  It seldom develops much heartwood and takes pressure treatment readily.  If you can cut it such that it remains fairly stable, it should do well as a place to hang fence wire.  :)

Growing in the woods or alongside of the road, it is fairly easily identified because of its very small pine cones.  They are supposed to be "serotinous" or will open in the heat of a fire.  The tree is fire tolerant and that leads to its being found, along with Long Leaf on ground that is burned frequently.  Pocosin is one of the few pines that will stump sprout, another way it survives the fires, and the needles that it grows from the bark on the trunk of the tree is another identifier of the species.

It flowers within the same periods as Loblolly and produces hybrids on occassion.  It can also get crossed up with Long leaf and slash, but the time tables are off enough that it doesn't happen too often.  A Forester told me one time that the hybrid, Sonderegger, as most pine crosses, generally seems to carry the worse traits of the two trees that crossed.  Still, I've read of intentional crossing of Loblolly and pitch pine to produce a lumber tree that will grow out of zone. Most pine hybrids seem to include Loblolly as one of the contributors.  I guess it has to do with the close proximity of the flower periods.

SYP is a marketing term and that is why it usually includes only four species.  The Southern Pine inspection bureau was responsible for the designation to align the lumber with its grading rules.  So this is why Southern yellow pine defaults to the four species, longleaf, slash, loblolly and shortleaf.

nsmike

When I'm trying to understand the relationshihtp between pines I go to the conifer oranization site http://www.conifers.org/pi/pin/index.htm it shows that virginia pine is clearly in the jack pine /logepole pine group. As you can see there are alot of species of SYP yet the marketing board only shows four.
Mike

Tom

There are yellow pines other than Southern Yellow Pines, but I have to disagree that there are more than four Southern Yellow pines..  Southern Yellow Pine is a Marketing term approved by the American Lumber Standard Commitee and is, defacto, very specific in its designation. 

The site you linked to is an interesting one.

Dodgy Loner

Well Tom, as a botanist I would have to disagree that the only acceptable definition of a Southern Yellow Pine is the one presented by the American Standard Committee ;).  We consider it to be a group of closely related species, including those pines that I mentioned, but you make an interesting point about the dubious properties of some of the minor species. 

In my own experience, I have never sawed pond pine, but I have seen it mixed with loblolly pine during harvesting operations in south Georgia.  It's no wonder, a lot of foresters can't tell loblolly pine from shortleaf pine, much less loblolly from pond pine.  Without the cones, even I have trouble reliably separating the two.  I've heard pond pine called black pine regularly by the old timers in south Georgia.  I'm surprised to hear of its strange wood properties.  It is very closely related to the pitch pine we have up here in the mountains.  Up here, pitch pine is far more common that shortleaf or loblolly pine, and it's regularly harvested and sold as southern yellow pine.  From what I can tell, it's pretty much identical in properties to the other SYPs.

DanG: As far as spruce pine goes, I can't say that I've ever heard of it being called turkey pine.  I've also never seen it being cut and sold along with the other SYPs.  It's kind of an oddball species, very unique in appearance.  Don't know what the wood looks like, but if you say it looks like loblolly, then I believe you :)
"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey." -John Ruskin

Any idiot can write a woodworking blog. Here's mine.

DanG

Yeah, spruce pine is strange all right. To clarify just a bit, the logs I sawed all came from one customer.  They obviously weren't open grown trees as the logs were long, straight and clear, but the ring spacing was wide like an open grown loblolly.  They were loaded with free water.  The boards were heavy, but dried real fast.  They had been down for a while, as the bark was beginning to slip.  I asked him if they'd been laying in water but he said they had been stacked high and dry.  I did note that the lumber lay really flat with very little movement during sawing or drying.  It was pleasant sawing, except that those 20 ft 1x10s were pretty heavy for an old fart like me.
"I don't feel like an old man.  I feel like a young man who has something wrong with him."  Dick Cavett
"Beat not thy sword into a plowshare, rather beat the sword of thine enemy into a plowshare."

SwampDonkey

I think there may be a difference only in opinion on the designation of these pines. In Wood Tech under Section "Wood Identification and Description of Wood by Species" these pines are grouped with other pines under the heading "Southern Pines" versus the heading SYP used in grading like Tom says.

The following footnote may help clear up some things or may just make each brace their feet all the more. :D Here goes.

In order to assist in selection of wood suitable for structural purposes, grading rules for Southern Yellow Pine contain the density rule provision. To qualify under the provision, structural timber must show on one end of the piece an average of not fewer than 6 rings per inch and 1/3 late-wood.

For the most part it is difficult to separate the lumber of each species. Longleaf and slash frequently exhibit multiple late-wood bands, and the pith of longleaf is twice the diameter of the others (0.2 in), 0.1 or less for the other southern pines.


So really, it's not a specific species, it's the density of the piece from the southern pines that class it SYP in grading.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

fishpharmer

I find this to be a fascinating discussion.  Botany or lobotomy.  Tomato or tamatoe.  Seems like this is a matter of semantics.  I had to look that up to make sure I was using it correctly.

http://as200l.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=semantics

Seems like everyone here is right in some respect.  Not that I have any authority to be a judge.  I am more like the redneck in the crowd yelling out his uneducated opinion. 

Seems to me Tom and lumber standards folks are concerned more about the physical and engineering properties of the wood.  Tom has seen and smelled it first hand, which to me is the best kind of experience.
I am sure others have too.  I may be kinda like dodgy loner, I have read alot about it but never actually had the chance to put hard shiny steel into aromatic fresh logs of many different species of southern pines(I am refering to region only).  I haven't smelled the the fresh sawdust, steel and diesel fumes wafting through the air.  I couldn't tell if the engine will bog more with one species or another.  I don't know if a log will jump out of the dogs.  Heck there is alot I don't know.  Guess thats why I am on Forestry Forum.

Wood color, leaf shape, region, common name, and physical properties all seem to be ways to lump together types of trees. 

Seems like the folks marketing SYP  use a combination of these things and maybe more.  I would think that the builders and consumers that buy SYP lumber don't really care what species it is.  They just want and expect a board that performs consistantly and a competitive price. 

Loggers are a different story,  a couple that I know, (not all, and I know several) will put a few Pinus serotina and Pinus virginiana in the middle of a load and sell it to a big mill as SYP in a heartbeat.  I bet I couldn't tell the difference.  I bet Tom could.

Here's a couple links that helped me draw the above conclusions;

http://www.southernpine.com/whatis.shtml

http://www.alsc.org/untreated_graderuleorg_mod.htm

http://spib.org/

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Dodgy Loner

Fishpharmer, you are absolutely correct that we are merely discussing semantics :).  But semantics often seem to make for great topics of discussion, don't they? ;D

I found they first link that you provided quite interesting.  On the first page, you'll find this line:
QuoteSouthern Pine grows in a vast band across the Southern United States, from East Texas to Virginia. In fact, it's a rare county that doesn't contain a representative of one of the four main species: shortleaf, longleaf, loblolly or slash.
If there are four main species, according to the southern pine council, doesn't that imply that there must be minor species as well? ???  Also interesting was this line:
QuoteLumber from all four is marketed as Southern Pine (or Southern Yellow Pine) and graded in accordance with the grading rules of the Southern Pine Inspection Bureau (SPIB), approved by the American Lumber Standard Committee.
This indicates to me that "southern pine" is in fact synonymous with "southern yellow pine".  But of course, with the exception of eastern white pine, which only snakes its way south along the Appalachian ridges, all pines in the South are yellow pines. 

As a consumer, however, all that really matters is the strength of the lumber, hence the "rings per inch" rule that SD cited.  Once the bark is gone, there's no reliable way to tell one southern yellow pine from another.  However, I do have to disagree with the last statement Donk makes:
Quote from: SwampDonkey on January 12, 2009, 05:38:04 AM
So really, it's not a specific species, it's the density of the piece from the southern pines that class it SYP in grading.
A loblolly pine will always be a southern yellow pine, even if the wood has two rings per inch.  It just can't (legally) be sold as structural timber due to its insufficient strength.

The final message, I guess, is that southern yellow pine is a common name for a group of trees, and as we all know, common names are confusing :)
"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey." -John Ruskin

Any idiot can write a woodworking blog. Here's mine.

SwampDonkey

I think egos have an even bigger role. :D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Tom

As a lobotomist, my ego dictates that, I can't tell one SYP tree from the other after it is been sawed into lumber.

I can make  a pretty good guess at Long Leaf, but I've also seen loblolly with rings so tight you can't count them.  That has been, supposedly, one of the factors in marketing SYP over the years, in that the word "lumped" is used in describing it.   "Once sawed, they are lumped into the market as SYP".  Those last quotes are mine as a synopsis of written and verbal comments I've heard over the years.

There is even a distinction as to the quality of lumber that comes from the four "major" species.  Loblolly is inherently the hardest to saw.  It's wide bands of summer wood (early wood) let a narrow kerf band wander around like a drunk on Main Street, and offers little guidance or resistance with the kerf as the Winter wood (late wood) is contacted.   I've sawed Loblolly that looks like a snake, almost as if you deliberately sawed it to look like a ribbon because the "waves" from one side matched the other.

Longleaf is the premium.  It makes the prettiest deep yellow lumber with red heart (not the disease) that one could ever want.  I hate to put any finish at all, but for some wax, on a piece of longleaf that has a mixture of heart and sapwood.  It looks like a piece of streak-a-lean bacon and gets prettier as it gets older.

So there is a lot to the claim that the definition may be structural when defining sawed boards, especially when the source is not known.  Knowing the character of some of the yellow pines, though, without some indication as to the source, SYP could lose its reputation as a strong and pretty building material if a "look-a--like" piece of Black Pine (Pocosin) makes it into lumber destined for headers, ladders or scaffolding.

In my simple opinion, the term SYP should be one that we should revere and protect, if for no other reason than to protect the reputation, and the uniqueness, of the region in which it grows. By making the distinction among Yellow Pines, we are declaring a special seat in the hierarchy of lumber for SYP.  That can be called semantics, if you like, but I call it marketing.  :)

Dodgy Loner

Here's a collection of seven common yellow pines, six of which grow in Georgia.  Anyone want to take a stab at them?







Tom, I totally understand your reasoning behind wanting to maintain the reputation of the term "southern yellow pine", but my feeling is that if you walk into any box store and check out there selection of 4x4's, that reputation is already well on its way to ruin.  Loblolly has to be the most variable of the SYPs, with some of them as hard, strong, and tight-grained as any longleaf pine, but the majority of them are of much lower quality, and I've even sawed some loblolly that was about as light as spruce - in color and in weight.  I wish all SYPs were longleaf :)
"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey." -John Ruskin

Any idiot can write a woodworking blog. Here's mine.

DanG

p. quartersawnus, p. flatsawnus, p. riftsawnus, p. gonnawarpus, p. niceboardus, p. denimus, p. particleboardus
"I don't feel like an old man.  I feel like a young man who has something wrong with him."  Dick Cavett
"Beat not thy sword into a plowshare, rather beat the sword of thine enemy into a plowshare."

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