wood id please

[Lee Alkureishi]

Hi all,

can anyone ID these logs for me? I saw a couple of trees being cut down on my way home yesterday, and asked if I could steal a couple of logs :)

Thanks!
229393229394229395

[Jamie Donaldson]

The first appears to be a pear variety, then Black Locust, and the third may be a Beech or Birch. It's not easy to evaluate without details from bark and leaves, so these are known as WAG observations!

[Lee Alkureishi]

Hi Jamie,

Thanks for the input. I think the first and third (sitting one in front of the other in picture 3) are actually the same tree, as the bark is identical. The coloring of the heartwood is different, but otherwise they seem the same. Your vote would be pear? I understand that would be a nice wood to turn :)

Thanks again

[Nathan Hawkes]

From where I'm sitting, the two pieces that appear to be from the same tree look most like River Birch. The somewhat flaky bark is what I'm going on. All the bradford pear that I've seen appears quite different. The other log I would guess as Mulberry or Osage Orange. The bark isn't quite rough enough for black locust, though the wood color isn't far off. Mulberry and Osage have a fairly variable coloration in my experience, and the bark is quite similar. Both of those woods will darken fairly quickly to an amber color if left out in bright sunlight--which might cause cracking, so that's not a great way of distinguishing. Another possibility is Elm.

[Steve Leibold]

The second picture looks like the mulberry I have sitting in my wood pile. Not sure about the others.

[Dennis Ford]

+1 on mulberry
I agree the flaky ones might be River Birch.

[Reed Gray]

I think I will agree with pear (that small reddish thing in the center is typical of pear), birch (if which there are many varieties, but the white under the outer bark is a good clue) and mulberry. Of those, the pear is my favorite to turn. Don't get much mulberry out here though.

robo hippy

[Jim Underwood]

I'm gonna say Birch on the two pieces with that white flaky bark. The color of the first one looked like B. Pear, but it had grain pattern where Pear has a very dense grain (like Maple) that doesn't show much on end grain.

The other one looks like Black Locust to me. It's a kindof muddy greenish yellow. If it's Mulberry, it'll be more whitish yellow than Locust, and if it's Osage Orange, it'll be highlighter yellow (no joke!) at first.

[Jason Ritchie]

There is definitely no Osage Orange in the pic. I have a yard full of logs and can post pics if that helps. The 2 logs on the left look like a river Birch I have growing in my yard.

[Thomas Canfield]

The grain and color in the single log looks like some Sasafras blanks that I was given, but I have not seen any bark, to add to confusion. The wood does not look yellow enough to me to be Osage Orange or Mulberry unless the cuts have some age on them.