Elm any good for firewood?

[GVS]

Almost all elm is tough to split but makes lots of heat!

 

[svk]

I leave the piss elm to rot in the woods...

How do you tell the difference?

The few elms up here died 25 years ago. I've never dealt with it.

 

[dwasifar]

I just split up a bunch of American elm collected from a Craigslist ad. Trunk sections mostly, been lying out behind the guy's garage for three years. It's really nice wood after all that time, even aging in rounds that size. Burns hot and lasts long. Does leave a lot of ash. I'm glad to have it, but I would NOT want to have tackled it without a splitter.

Last August I collected some red elm, still green and pee-smelling. I tried to split it then, but there was just no way, so I went out and split it in January when it was below zero. It splits up much nicer when frozen.

 

[sunfish]

How do you tell the difference?

The few elms up here died 25 years ago. I've never dealt with it.

Red Elm is redish brown inside, bark will fall off standing dead and the tree will take years to rot, or fall. Piss Elm is mostly white inside, bark does falls off, but it will rot fairly quick.

 

[Red Elm]

Sunfish is dead on with his description. Also, red elm lacks big buttress roots. The trunk will look like a big pipe stuck in the ground. American elm has normal sized buttress roots.

Also the winter silhouette of american elm is like that of a flower vase or martini glass, spreading top from upstretched limbs.

 

[svk]

So American and piss elm are one and the same?

 

[sunfish]

So American and piss elm are one and the same?

Yes, as far as I know.

 

[Whitespider]

Originally the nickname "Piss Elm" was giving to Winged Elm (or Wahoo) because of the strong smell of urine when standing down-wind of a stand.
Depending on local or regional custom the nickname can be attached to near any Elm species... sometimes because of odor, sometimes because certain species can actually "piss" water when young and cut during spring awakening.

So no, American Elm and Piss Elm are not necessarily one-and-the-same... it just depends on who's doing the labeling.
I've taken to ignoring the name "Piss Elm"... it mostly means nothing past local custom.
'Round here young (like less than 10-inches diameter) Siberian Elm is often called Piss Elm because it tends to "piss" out water when cut, and it stinks (but, to me anyway, it don't stink like piss).
*

 

[1project2many]

Chinese and siberian, both introduced cultivars, arent worth the effort to start the saw.

IME Siberian Elm will rot while sitting in the round waiting to dry. If dry, it has very little heat to offer. Learn to recognize that if you scrounge because it's one to avoid. Chinese Elm OTOH is a decent medium heat wood that splits fairly easily. I let it dry for two years before burning and split nearly every piece before stacking in the wood shed. The sticky sap that oozes out of larger pieces when green is a PITA but it washes off fairly easily so it sits in the outside pile for the first year.

Also the winter silhouette of american elm is like that of a flower vase or martini glass, spreading top from upstretched limbs.

Once you learn to recognize AE it's easy to see it, especially standing dead. After a year or two dead most of the stringiness is gone but there's usually plenty of heat left. I've cut and split a large green AE and it took three years of waiting before the wood was dry enough to burn well. Although I recognize why it's earned a bad reputation with the old northeast yankees, I do not turn down AE as a firewood. Piss Elm? Haven't found it in a tree book yet.

 

[svk]

I'm thinking the stuff up by us must have been American as it rotted away while standing and slowly all of the limbs fell off. The bark also fell off in huge sheets.