Scored some more wood...

[man of stihl]

an elderly widow woman my son does yard work for gave us 2 trees...one dead leaner that had fell over into a live, good size red oak...had to cut both to get the leaner down. Now heres where it gets interesting...had one opening to throw them in, everything went great until the leaner rolled and pulled the big red oak into a wad of trees..and it hung up at about 15 feet high......arrrrrgh! :ahhh: Just lucky that a logging crew was straight across the road from where the tree was and they were nice enough to come on one of their grapple skidders and hook to the trunk of the big oak and pull it down for me. :cheese:

The last pic well...don't ya just love it when where ya cutting wood theses things are all around....devil's walking stick is what we call them down here!

 

[smokinj]

Good wood there!

 

[PapaDave]

Good score, MoS!

 

[wood spliter]

Nice score and you get to help someone. We also call them devils walking stick.

 

[WoodPorn]

That thing is nasty looking, what exactly is it??

 

[FireAnt]

Should be fun to cut. Nice score!

 

[Wood Duck]

I usually call them Hercules' Club. They seem to grow often on steep hills along hiking trails - the type of hill where you want to reach out and grab hold of a sapling to help you up or down the hill.

 

[WoodPorn]

I usually call them Hercules' Club. They seem to grow often on steep hills along hiking trails - the type of hill where you want to reach out and grab hold of a sapling to help you up or down the hill.

Is it a sapling?? If so what species?

 

[Wood Duck]

The picture shows the top of a shoot, so maybe this one is a sapling, but Devil's Walking Stick generally doesn't get to be a very large tree. It is a smallish tree that usually has stems 3 or 4 inches in diameter, reaching about 20 ft tall or so. Generally it lacks large branches, and grows in a clump of many stems along edges, clearings, roadsides, powerlines, and similar places. They grow all over the eastern US, at least as far north as PA (I am not really sure how far north this plant grows naturally). The stem is very thorny, the leaves are large and compound (many smaller leaflets form each leaf) and the top of each stem will have a large flower head of many small whitish flowers followed by a clump of bluish berries in late summer and fall.

To keep on the topic of this form, I'd say it would be pretty poor firewood. I think the stem is hollow and not really wood. I am sure it would burn, but with only about as many BTUs as a sunflower stalk. it would also be a pain to process due to the numerous thorns, and it would take about 1000 full sized Devil's Walking Stick trees to yield a cord of lousy firewood. On the upside, probably splits really easily because it lacks branches.

 

[WoodPorn]

So in summary:
It is not acually a tree sapling, it has no firewood value, and it's only real attribute is if you are the devil and you have a limp?

 

[wood spliter]

So in summary:
It is not acually a tree sapling, it has no firewood value, and it's only real attribute is if you are the devil and you have a limp?

Yes..

 

[man of stihl]

I usually call them Hercules' Club. They seem to grow often on steep hills along hiking trails - the type of hill where you want to reach out and grab hold of a sapling to help you up or down the hill.

LOL and like Wood Duck said...they are tuff on the hands or any other part of the body that comes in contact with the hideous thing!! It sure is alot of fun (sarcasm) to cut wood around where they are.

 

[firefighterjake]

When I was in Alaska visiting my sister I met up with Devil's Club . . . fortunately we weren't very intimately involved.

(broken link removed to http://alaskatrekker.com/plants.htm)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_club

Here's info on the Devil's Walking Stick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aralia_spinosa

I'm happy to say we have neither of these types of plants to contend with here in Maine.