Saw this wood for sale, claiming it is Black Walnut. There are walnuts all over the ground around it. I looked at the tree today. The smaller branches look like Silver Maple. The main stem is 40' long and about 3' at the base. I don't see another tree around it. I've never seen BW bark like this. The heartwood is only about 12" and is not dark like Walnut I'm used to. Any ideas?
Black Walnut?
- Thread starter buzz sawyer
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Definitely not a HVBW tree. Are you sure the nuts around it are not hickory nuts? Bark looks like a hickory to me.
^^^^ this
Black for comparison
They are trying to sell it ?
Black for comparison
They are trying to sell it ?
Yes, the old highly valuable walnut syndrome. He paid $5K to have it taken down and thinks he will recoup some of that with the butt log. A rep from a sawmill is supposed to check it out. There is a metal pipe grown into the big log about half-way up. What really is confusing is all the walnuts on the ground. The guy said they were falling from the tree as they cut off branches. Maybe Butternut?
Mills won't touch yards trees. Any metal is a big no.
That's what I told him. I hope he lets me know what the sawmill guys think about the species.
Mike Ray
ArboristSite Operative
I would lean toward hickory to.
That's black hickory not black walnut. The nuts look similar when the husks are still on them, but if you look close the husk on a hickory nut peals off in 4 pcs like slices of an orange where as a walnut husk peals off in chunks like you're trying to peal or skin an orange. If you look in the yard you will probably old brown wedges of the hulls. That log is worth more as firewood than it ever would be for lumber. Black hickory burns pretty good, but you need to get it cut and split so it can start drying out. It likes to rot pretty quick, and the longer it takes to get it dry, the faster it will rot. If I cut one in the winter time (sap is in the roots, no the tree) and get it split in the spring, I can burn it the following winter. If it sits on the woodpile, by the end of its 2nd season its starting to rot and by the time the 3rd season arrives, its too far gone for me to bother messing with.
Black Walnut nut 
I don't know who else said it but Hickory is right. I never looked at the nuts the other day.
I was thinking Shelllbark based on the bark and nuts. Just knew it wasn't Walnut.
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Actually, that's shagbark which is extremely good firewood. In the one pick that I looked at previously, the bark pattern didn't look nearly as shaggy which is what black hickory looks like. After you posted this, I went back and looked at all 3 pics a little closer. Definitely shagbark. Burns long and burns hot. Can be a challenge to split if its knotty, but I managed to heat my house with it for over a decade before I bothered to start looking more seriously for a hydraulic splitter.
