What tree is this

g squared 23

5 year old buck +
I've been doing just a little TSI, mostly removing junk maples and releasing oaks and I ran into a small cluster of this tree. Not sure what it was so didn't want to remove it in case it was something useful.

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Looks quite a bit like black walnut. Mature sassafras does have similar bark. Got any close up pics of the twigs?

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Everything I can come up with isn't exactly "useful" from a deer perspective. Walnut or Cottonwood would be my initial guesses without more info. Neither of which are of value to deer. It looks like the tree has some damage so even if it is walnut it may not be worth much. Something I do in a situation where you are not sure.....leave it stand but mark it with paint of tape or something and come back and get some leaves off of it. That really, really helps a lot from doing something you may regret and in this case a few trees standing more than likely are not going to grossly affect what you are doing in a negative way. It's real easy to undo decades worth of mother natures work because we are impatient. You could also cut one of the small ones and see what the wood looks like. Obviously walnut with have a large and very dark heartwood. Cottonwood will quite possibly actually still have water in it. I'm leaning walnut however......good for squirrels and not much else if it isn't a saw log quality tree. Walnut also produce a chemical in the soil to stunt grow of other plants as well. Is there any signs of walnuts on the ground?
 
I did not notice any walnuts on the ground immediately surrounding the tree. I have marked them with a very obvious "?" so I can get a better idea this summer.


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Plain Chestnut oak (not swamp chestnut oak) has a similar bark also. May need to wait for leaf out.

Steve will know.
 
I did not notice any walnuts on the ground immediately surrounding the tree. I have marked them with a very obvious "?" so I can get a better idea this summer.


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I have a ton of BW and it seems that trees that are less than 12" dbh (or so) don't make many nuts. On the other hand, I have some large BW that produce thousands of nuts every year.
Do you have any of those tree you wold cut? BW has dark brown heart wood (and white sap wood). Even a 2 or 3 inch tree will have that obvious dark heart wood.

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I guess I'd lean toward black walnut. This site has some photos and descriptions. It suggests cutting the bark to see what color it is, dark brown for black walnut or reddish orange for Sassafrass.

http://treebarkid.com/index.php/general-bark-id-key
 
I guess I'd lean toward black walnut. This site has some photos and descriptions. It suggests cutting the bark to see what color it is, dark brown for black walnut or reddish orange for Sassafrass.

http://treebarkid.com/index.php/general-bark-id-key
And the very tips of sassafras twigs are green, walnut tips are gray-brown.
Sassafras also has a strong fragrance in the twigs and walnut doesn't.

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Here's a cross section of BW
It's been sanded and sealed (no stain). A freshly cut and not sanded or sealed cut would show a greater contrast between the heart and sap wood than the piece in this pic.
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Sure looks like black walnut from here.


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Ok well assuming it is BW, should I get rid of them?


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I love oaks, but I am a firm believer in diversity within a forest. It seems to me there should be should plenty of be big walnuts hanging on the tree during the late summer and fall, so you can make a definite identification then. But Chickenlittle makes a good point, if these are black walnuts, there will most likely be no other saplings coming up underneath them. As a result, this will likely remain a mostly an open, grassy understory which is good fawning cover for deer and other critters. I’d leave ‘em.
 
I love oaks, but I am a firm believer in diversity within a forest. It seems to me there should be should plenty of be big walnuts hanging on the tree during the late summer and fall, so you can make a definite identification then. But Chickenlittle makes a good point, if these are black walnuts, there will most likely be no other saplings coming up underneath them. As a result, this will likely remain a mostly an open, grassy understory which is good fawning cover for deer and other critters. I’d leave ‘em.
He should be able to identify them long before nut season. With some better close up pics of the twigs, we should be able to ID the tree. And if he could cut a small one or even a small branch from a tree, we could tell 100% if it's walnut.
And it's not true that it will be grassy with no other saplings growing under it. There are other tree species that are juglone resistant.

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Ok well assuming it is BW, should I get rid of them?


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Tough question. How many acres do you have? If they are walnut, are they impacting a substantial percentage of an important part of your acreage? Are they preventing you from growing something else that you want or need?
There's plenty of things that benefit deer that grow just fine under walnut. Black raspberry, for instance grows great under bw.
Squirrels love them if they matter to you. And I watched lots of birds pick through the nut leavings that squirrels create. So they aren't a totally useless tree to wildlife.
All that being said, there's a lot of guys on here that despise bw and try to eliminate them. I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan and I am actively cutting the smaller ones to reduce them spreading and I'm not sad one one dies by other causes. But I don't cut the huge ones I have. Many of them have no timber value and they aren't the best firewood so I just leave the big ones. I cut ALL the little ones. I don't want any more than I already have, that's for sure.

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I think it would be best to wait and look at the leaves so you will know for sure. However, it sure does look like a Black Walnut to me. I agree with Bill that Chestnut Oak bark is almost identical, but the tree form makes me think of a lot of BW trees I have seen.
 
Thanks all. I have 66 acres, 90 % is timber. This particular area is waaay too open and I'm trying to open things up so I can plant some evergreens and shrubs to thicken things up.

These trees aren't right in the middle, I can leave them for now and determine what they are for sure before I topple them. But I am anxious to identify and thin out the "junk trees" and maximize my cover.


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Thanks all. I have 66 acres, 90 % is timber. This particular area is waaay too open and I'm trying to open things up so I can plant some evergreens and shrubs to thicken things up.

These trees aren't right in the middle, I can leave them for now and determine what they are for sure before I topple them. But I am anxious to identify and thin out the "junk trees" and maximize my cover.


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Are you willing to cut even 1 of them now, even the smallest of them? And if not, are you willing to cut 1 branch off of one? Doing that will positively tell you if they are walnut. If they are, and you decide that you want to cut more, winter is the best time to do it. My deer would browse the tops for sure more so than they would 3 months from now. May as well put food on the ground now, in winter while they still have browse value. Cutting them during the other season isn't taking full advantage of the best time to cut.
Plus, if you do intend on using it for firewood, which walnut is just so so, it's better to cut it before the sap flow. Walnut holds a lot of water and doesn't season so well so cut it when it's at its driest point of the year...winter.

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If that is a black walnut don't just cut it for fire wood. It could be worth a little money. That first branch up from the ground would be where a rifle stock would be taken from. Usually a BW needs to be 100 years old before that crotch is big enough for a stock.
 
We have some gum trees at camp that look very similar to your bark pix. Tree shape as well. The few we have are all growing together in a cluster in a fairly small ground footprint. If they're gum trees - cut them. No good for firewood even.

As others have said, further investigation is needed for positive ID.
 
That looks like black walnut. Scrape off the top 1/4 inch of bark with a sharp knife. Check the color of the inner bark and if it is chocolate brown you have walnut. Because of that hump in the trunk that tree is not likely to ever be veneer quality. The Professor is correct though, in another 70 years it could make a few nice gun stocks. It is hard to know what to do with walnuts trees.
 
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