[Magdalen] Bye-Bye Blue Beech

[Charles Wohlers]

If you look up ironwood in Wikipedia, you get a very large number of trees 
which are sometimes called that. In the Eastern US & Canada, "ironwood" 
usually means American hornbeam. Your description of the wood doesn't sound 
like hornbeam, so maybe it is tropical.

Chad Wohlers
Woodbury, VT USA
chadwohl at satucket.com



-----Original Message----- 
From: Jay Weigel
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 1:15 PM
To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
Subject: Re: [Magdalen] Bye-Bye Blue Beech

IIRC, there is some other kind of tree known as "ironwood" that is (maybe)
South American and is hard as the dickens. The wood stinks when cut and the
sap can be irritating. My late ex's former employer used shipping crates
made of this stuff, and as a result, we had some things made of it, as he'd
managed to secure a few of the crates for personal use. The wood lasts
practically forever. He built a workshop from one very large crate that he
had hauled to the first house we owned, and it's still standing unscathed.
I found that the sawdust made a dandy insect repellent when scattered
lightly about my garden, too.

On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:

>
>
>
> I always hate cutting a tree I've planted, but today I had removed
> my two Blue Beech trees (Carpinus carolinica because they had
> gotten too large, and were affecting two other prize trees - a
> Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) and the largest
> of several Alaska Cedars (Cupressus nootkatensis).
>
> The Blue Beeches are really related to the Birch family and not
> to true beeches.  Together with another Birch family relative,
> the Hophornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) they are also called
> "Ironwoods" because of their extremely hard wood.
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpinus_caroliniana
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrya_virginiana
>
>
>
> David Strang.
>