Hackberry?

[David Propst]

Hey! I’m in western NC cleaning up and cutting blanks from a huge hickory that blew over this summer. This small tree was collateral damage.
The freshly cut wood in the center photo is very yellow, but I just could not get it to photograph.
Edit: I added the bark pic. Pretty sure now it is mulberry. Thanks all!

 

[Tim Connell]

To me, the yellow colored wood looks more like mulberry. Hackberry around here is white until you let it sit for a year. Hackberry is also a relatively soft wood, while mulberry is much harder. Look up a picture of hackberry bark, it is very distinctive in appearance.

 

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Like Tim says, Hackberry is white wood and Mulberry is Yellow, Hackberry has this ridged bark Mulberry is more regular green bark, see pic's.

 

[Richard Coers]

I don't find hackberry to be soft at all. Along the line of ash for hardness around here. Hackberry usually has a core color of nearly black color. As hackberry gets bigger, the bark looks like bumps and warts. Which wood do the leaves belong to? Definitely not mulberry leaves. The color of your picture reminds me more of black locust or redbud. The two cream/dark vessels on the left are hackberry. This log had a very unusual core.

 

[Michael Anderson]

That is mulberry, for sure. The leaves, color, and visible bark in the second pic confirm.

If it was hackberry, it would likely already be spalting, or at least fairly grey/blue already. Hackberry (and Sugarberry) are some of the most aggressive spalters that I’m aware of.

 

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I find Hackberry to be like it's relative the Elm medium hard and turns just fine.

I do have a Mulberry leaves picture here, that grew on my property (have eaten the berries from it) yes often they do look like a mitten but not always as you can see.

As for the bark picture I took that from a medium size Hackberry en it's so different from most tree's bark, the owner of that tree and there were several and all about the same size and with berries on them, still green when I took the picture, didn't know what species of tree it was and asked me.

Hackberry has often a much more pointed leaf but again not all are alike.

Mulberry leaves, then Hackberry seedling, next Hackberry bark.

 

[Michael Anderson]

@Leo Van Der Loo I was referring to David's original photo set. Yes, yours is absolutely hackberry (at least the first couple of photos in your original set); mulberry for the remaining three of course.

It is a treat to have a fruiting mulberry in your backyard. Mulberry is one of my favorite fruits--too bad the squirrels like the berries as much as I do. Once they're ripe, it seems like I only have a week until all of the fruit has been scavenged by others

 

[Charlie Knighton]

Hackberry, I remember it was pretty hard wood, I was fairly new at the time

 

[Gary Morgan]

I think it’s mulberry.