Tree Species

The Trees Behind The Timber

Every tract has a story older than the deed. These pages cover what a species meant before it was a commodity, what actually happened to it, what the medical record says people did with it, and - the part that pays - what the wood is worth to you today.

Why these read the way they do

Most species information online is either a nursery catalog or a botany lecture. Neither one tells a landowner what a stand of it is worth, why a mill will or will not take it, or why the tree that built his grandfather's barn is not standing on his ground anymore.

These are long pages on purpose. They are sourced from USDA Forest Service silvics and wood publications, USDA NRCS plant guides, land-grant extension services, and the working record of the trees themselves. Where the popular story outruns the evidence, the page says so.

Each page carries a section on what the tree was used for medicinally. That is a historical record and nothing else - no page here recommends a treatment, gives a dose, or claims anything works. Several of these species are toxic to livestock. Talk to a physician, and talk to a veterinarian before your animals get near any of it.

The Words First

Deciduous, Conifer, Evergreen

Three words get used as if they were interchangeable, and they answer three different questions. Two describe the tree standing in your woods. The pair hiding behind them - hardwood and softwood - is the one your timber check is written in.

What do the leaves do?

Deciduous

A deciduous tree drops all of its foliage for part of the year - bare limbs in January, new leaves in April. Nearly every broadleaf tree in the Eastern forest works this way, and in the timber trade the broadleaf trees are the hardwoods, whatever the wood in question actually feels like.

Think Oak, maple, walnut, hickory, yellow-poplar

How does it reproduce?

Conifer

A conifer carries its seed in cones and its foliage as needles or scales. The trade calls the conifers softwoods - and again the word is a market category, not a hardness test. Longleaf pine is harder than a fair number of hardwoods standing on the same acre.

Think Pine, spruce, cypress, cedar, hemlock

Is it ever bare?

Evergreen

Evergreen is a habit, not a family: it only means the tree holds foliage year-round, old leaves or needles hanging on until new ones replace them. Most conifers are evergreen, which is how the two words got tangled - but neither one implies the other, and the exceptions below are the proof.

Think Most pines and cedars - and live oak, magnolia, American holly

The exception that proves it

Bald Cypress

A deciduous conifer

Cones and needles - a true conifer, scaled and sold as a softwood - and it still turns rust-orange and drops every needle each fall, standing bald all winter over the swamp. That is the name.

Full page

The exception that proves it

Live Oak

An evergreen hardwood

A broadleaf oak that holds green leaves the whole year across the Deep South. Evergreen by habit, hardwood on every scale ticket ever written for it - the terms simply measure different things.

Why a landowner should care

Because the split that prices timber is hardwood versus softwood, and it follows the botany, not the calendar. Softwood is the plantation and dimension-lumber economy: volume business, often sold by the ton, on a pulpwood-to-sawtimber ladder. Hardwood is the grade economy: bought stem by stem, priced by species and clear faces, where two logs off the same tree can differ by multiples. When a buyer says one word or the other, he is naming which of those markets your trees sell into - and every species page below says which side of the line its tree lives on.

The full reads

Each one written the same way: what it meant, what happened to it, what the record says people did with it, and what the wood is worth to you now. Pine and white oak come first because that is where most of the money in Southern timber actually is.

Pinus taeda, P. palustris, P. echinata, P. elliottii

Southern Yellow Pine

The longleaf forest that covered the Southeast, the naval stores industry that worked it, the cutover that ended it, and the fast-rotation loblolly that replaced it. If you own planted pine, this is the page that explains what a mill is actually buying and how the price on your stand gets set.

Original longleaf range left

~3-5%

Read the page

Quercus alba

White Oak

The property that made a wooden hull watertight is the property that makes a barrel watertight, and it comes down to plugged pores. Old Ironsides, the live oak correction almost nobody makes, and why a stave mill will outbid a sawmill for one log off your ridge.

Stave-grade butt log

~100 years of growth

Read the page

Quercus rubra

Northern Red Oak

White oak holds liquid and red oak does not, and that one difference splits every oak load in the country into two prices. Why the open pores that keep it out of barrels made it the default American floor, what oak wilt does to a stand, and why the word red oak on your cruise sheet means eight different trees.

Species scaled as red oak

8 or more

Read the page

Liriodendron tulipifera

Yellow-Poplar

The canoe tree of the frontier and the tallest hardwood in the Eastern woods - close to 200 feet in the old coves. Why a tree that is not a poplar sells as one, what took up the room the chestnut left, and why a cove full of it is the most straightforward grade timber sale a landowner ever makes.

Tallest Eastern hardwood

nearly 200 ft

Read the page

Juglans nigra

Black Walnut

Gunstocks for two world wars, veneer buyers who will cross three states for one tree, and walnut thieves in the newspapers of the 1970s. What makes one walnut worth a truck and the tree beside it worth firewood - and why this species, more than any other, pays the landowner who takes a second bid.

Veneer premium over a sawlog

multiples

Read the page

Carya spp. - shagbark, shellbark, mockernut, pignut

Hickory

No common North American wood matches hickory's combination of strength, hardness, stiffness, and shock resistance - the Forest Service's own handbook says so. What pawcohiccora was, what Old Hickory meant as a soldier's compliment, why handle mills got picky, and where the money is when the flooring buyer passes.

Janka hardness (shagbark)

1,820 lbf

Read the page

Taxodium distichum

Bald Cypress

The tree that breaks the rules: a deciduous conifer, bald every winter, knees rising out of the water around it. Trees in one North Carolina swamp have stood more than 2,600 years. What the swamp loggers did to the old growth, why "the wood eternal" was true then and is only half-true now, and what a cypress bottom is worth wet.

Oldest documented in the East

2,600+ years

Read the page

Castanea dentata

American Chestnut

Roughly four billion trees died in one human lifetime. The stumps are still alive and still sprouting. What that means for the wood in your barn, the sprouts on your ground, and the honest state of restoration work.

Trees lost to blight

~4 billion

Read the page

Ulmus americana, U. rubra, U. thomasii

Elm

The first woman in Norse cosmology, the Liberty Tree in Boston, water mains bored out of solid logs, and a wood that will not split no matter what you do to it. Plus the one elm with a documented medical record worth reading.

American elms lost to DED

tens of millions

Read the page

Robinia pseudoacacia (and the true acacias, Vachellia spp.)

Acacia & Black Locust

The acacia of Exodus - the wood of the Ark of the Covenant - is a desert thorn tree from the Sinai. The acacia on a Southern fence line is black locust, and it is a different plant on a different continent. Both are real. Neither is the other - and one of them is poisonous to your horses.

Black locust Janka

1,700 lbf

Read the page

The rest of the trees

The working list: what is standing on most Southern and Eastern ground, the Northwestern species the directory's mills name alongside it, who buys each one, and the catch. No deep dive - the species above get that.

Names on a log deck are trade names, not botany. A mill buying "red oak" means eight species, "SYP" means four, and "poplar" usually means a tree that is not a poplar at all. This list is written the way a scaler talks, with the botanical name beside it so you can match what a forester writes on your cruise.

None of this says who is buying. The sawmill and wood-processor directory lists 2,931 plants across 21 states with the species each state agency published beside them - a facilities list, not a market. No document in it says whether a gate is open, what it pays, or how far it will haul.

Pines & Softwoods

The volume of the South and the framing lumber of the country. Sold by the ton, graded by diameter, and priced against how far the truck has to drive.

Pine is the one softwood the source documents name outright rather than filing under softwood: 298 records do, and 160 of them are Georgia's listed mills and processors - the deepest pine list in the directory.

Loblolly Pine

Pinus taeda

Where: East Texas to Virginia, planted on more Southern acres than anything else.
Bought for: Pulpwood, chip-n-saw, sawtimber, poles.
The catch: The default plantation pine. Value turns on thinning history more than on age.

Full page

Longleaf Pine

Pinus palustris

Where: Coastal plain, from Virginia to east Texas - a fraction of its original range.
Bought for: Poles, piling, sawtimber, pine straw.
The catch: Slower than loblolly, straighter and denser, and the only Southern pine with a straw income worth counting.

Full page

Shortleaf Pine

Pinus echinata

Where: The widest range of the Southern pines - Piedmont, Ozarks, and up into Missouri.
Bought for: Sawtimber, pulpwood.
The catch: Sprouts from the stump when young, which no other Southern pine does. Sold in the SYP pool.

Full page

Slash Pine

Pinus elliottii

Where: Deep South coastal plain - Florida, south Georgia, the Gulf.
Bought for: Pulpwood, sawtimber, poles, pine straw.
The catch: Planted hard in the naval stores era. Hits merchantable size fast on wet flatwoods sites.

Full page

Virginia Pine

Pinus virginiana

Where: Piedmont and southern Appalachians, usually on old fields and poor ground.
Bought for: Pulpwood, Christmas trees.
The catch: Short, limby, and knotty. It holds eroded ground well and rarely makes sawtimber.

Eastern White Pine

Pinus strobus

Where: The Northeast, Lake States, and the higher Appalachians.
Bought for: Millwork, log homes, siding, boards.
The catch: A different market from Southern yellow pine - softer, lighter, and priced as an appearance wood, not a structural one.

Baldcypress

Taxodium distichum

Where: River bottoms and swamps across the Southeast.
Bought for: Siding, timbers, beams, mulch.
The catch: The rot resistance everybody quotes belongs to old-growth heartwood. Second-growth cypress is nowhere near it, and it is what is standing today.

Full page

Eastern Redcedar

Juniperus virginiana

Where: Fencerows, glades, and abandoned pasture nearly everywhere east of the Plains.
Bought for: Fence posts, closet and chest lining, small-mill lumber, novelty.
The catch: No pulp market and few big mills take it. Buyers are local and specific, so it sells by the phone call rather than by the sealed bid.

Western Redcedar

Thuja plicata

Where: The wet Northwest - the Washington and Oregon coast, and inland to northern Idaho and western Montana.
Bought for: Shingles and shakes, siding, decking, fence and post stock, boards.
The catch: Neither a cedar nor a relative of the eastern tree above, and the two are not interchangeable at a mill. The rot resistance is in the heartwood only, and the wood is soft and brash enough that handling defect shows up fast.

Eastern Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

Where: Appalachian coves and the Northeast.
Bought for: Framing, pallets, crating.
The catch: The hemlock woolly adelgid is killing stands across the range. Salvage value drops fast once the tree dies.

Western Hemlock

Tsuga heterophylla

Where: The Pacific Northwest, coast range to the inland mountains - the volume conifer of western Washington.
Bought for: Framing lumber, plywood, pulp.
The catch: Sold in the hem-fir grading group with the true firs rather than under its own name, so a load is priced on the group's rules. The adelgid wrecking eastern hemlock is not what is happening out here.

Spruce & Fir

Picea and Abies spp.

Where: Northern New England, the Lake States, and the spruce-fir tops of the southern Appalachians.
Bought for: Pulp, SPF framing lumber.
The catch: The northern volume species. In the South they are a mountaintop remnant, not a timber type.

Tamarack & Western Larch

Larix laricina, L. occidentalis

Where: Tamarack in Lake States and Northeastern swamps; western larch in Montana, Idaho, and eastern Washington.
Bought for: Pulp, posts and poles, cabin logs, framing lumber.
The catch: Deciduous conifers: they turn gold and drop every needle in the fall, which is the single thing landowners most often mistake for a dying stand. Western larch is graded and sold in the Douglas fir-larch group, while tamarack sits on ground wet enough that logging usually waits for frost.

Douglas-fir

Pseudotsuga menziesii

Where: The Pacific Northwest and the Rockies - not a native Eastern tree.
Bought for: Structural lumber, plywood, beams.
The catch: On the list because it sets the framing-lumber benchmark Southern pine is priced against.

Oaks

Two groups, two different products, two different prices - and a mill scaler separates them before he quotes you. White oaks hold liquid; red oaks do not.

Three states' source documents pull oak out of plain hardwood at all, and 220 records name it - 95 of them among Wisconsin's listed mills. Not one of those documents says which oak, which is why both groups here are worth reading before you agree to a price.

White Oak

Quercus alba

Where: Nearly the whole East, best on deep upland soils.
Bought for: Stave logs, grade sawtimber, flooring, crossties.
The catch: The barrel tree, and the one that built wooden hulls. Stave grade is a separate, higher-paying product from grade sawtimber.

Full page

Post Oak

Quercus stellata

Where: Dry upland ridges and old pasture across the South.
Bought for: Crossties, pallets, firewood.
The catch: White oak group, but short and crooked. It is priced as tie material, not as stave or grade.

Swamp Chestnut Oak

Quercus michauxii

Where: Bottomland flats and terraces in the Southeast.
Bought for: Stave logs, grade sawtimber.
The catch: Called cow oak locally. One of the best stave trees in the woods, and often cut without anyone knowing that.

Bur & Chinkapin Oak

Quercus macrocarpa, Q. muehlenbergii

Where: Midwest and Upper South, limestone ground and bottoms.
Bought for: Stave logs, grade sawtimber, ties.
The catch: White oak group. Bur oak's open-grown form makes big limby yard trees that scale poorly.

Overcup Oak

Quercus lyrata

Where: Wet bottomland clay flats that flood.
Bought for: Crossties, pallets.
The catch: White oak group by botany, low grade by habit - the sites it grows on produce short, defective boles.

Northern Red Oak

Quercus rubra

Where: The Appalachians north through the Lake States.
Bought for: Grade sawtimber, flooring, cabinet stock, veneer.
The catch: The benchmark red oak for grade. Cannot be used for tight cooperage - the pores are open.

Full page

Southern Red Oak

Quercus falcata

Where: Dry uplands across the coastal plain and Piedmont.
Bought for: Sawtimber, ties, pallets.
The catch: Also called Spanish oak. Coarser and lower grade than the northern tree.

Full page

Cherrybark Oak

Quercus pagoda

Where: Rich bottomland ridges in the Mississippi Valley and the Southeast.
Bought for: Veneer, grade sawtimber.
The catch: The best red oak in the South and worth identifying before you sell a bottomland tract as mixed hardwood.

Full page

Water & Willow Oak

Quercus nigra, Q. phellos

Where: Bottoms, branch heads, and half the yards in the South.
Bought for: Crossties, pallets, pulpwood.
The catch: Red oak group. Fast, common, and usually tie-grade rather than lumber-grade.

Black, Scarlet & Pin Oak

Quercus velutina, Q. coccinea, Q. palustris

Where: Uplands through the Midwest and Appalachians.
Bought for: Sawtimber, ties, pallets.
The catch: Red oak group. All are highly susceptible to oak wilt, which can kill a red oak in a single season.

Live Oak

Quercus virginiana

Where: The coastal South, from the Carolinas around to Texas.
Bought for: Almost nothing commercially - it is a landscape and heritage tree now.
The catch: The frames of the USS Constitution were live oak. The wood is dense and interlocked, mills do not want it, and most standing live oaks are protected by local ordinance.

Other Hardwoods

The mixed stand: the walnut a buyer will drive for, the sweetgum he will not, and everything in between that goes to ties, pallets, and pulp.

The mixed-stand names cluster in one state's list: 46 of the 58 records that name sycamore, and 33 of the 35 that name hackberry, are Arkansas's listed mills and processors - its source document names species tree by tree where most of the others stop at hardwood and softwood.

Yellow-Poplar

Liriodendron tulipifera

Where: Appalachian coves and rich slopes, throughout the East.
Bought for: Grade lumber, veneer core, millwork, pallets.
The catch: Not a poplar and not related to one. Tall, straight, and the most common grade hardwood in the Appalachians.

Full page

Hickory

Carya spp.

Where: Uplands throughout the East.
Bought for: Flooring, tool handles, pallets, charcoal and smoking wood.
The catch: Hard, heavy, and difficult to dry without degrade, so mills are selective about who they buy it from.

Full page

Pecan

Carya illinoinensis

Where: Bottomlands of the Mississippi Valley and planted orchards across the South.
Bought for: Flooring, cabinet stock - sold in the hickory pool.
The catch: Orchard trees carry embedded metal and are frequently rejected at the mill.

Full page

Sweetgum

Liquidambar styraciflua

Where: Everywhere in the South that anybody ever stopped mowing.
Bought for: Pulpwood, pallets, plywood core.
The catch: Sap and heart are two different-looking woods, and it warps hard when dried, which caps what it can be used for.

Blackgum & Tupelo

Nyssa sylvatica, N. aquatica

Where: Uplands and swamps respectively, across the Southeast.
Bought for: Pulpwood, pallets, containers.
The catch: Interlocked grain makes it nearly impossible to split, which is why old farms used it for hog troughs and why sawyers price it low.

Black Walnut

Juglans nigra

Where: Fencerows and rich bottoms, Midwest and Upper South especially.
Bought for: Veneer logs, gunstock blanks, grade lumber.
The catch: The highest-value hardwood most landowners will ever own, and the one most often bought cheap from an owner who did not know. Get more than one bid.

Full page

Butternut

Juglans cinerea

Where: Scattered on rich, moist sites from the Lake States and New England down the Appalachians.
Bought for: Carving stock, cabinet and panel work, small lots of veneer.
The catch: Butternut canker has killed most of the range, and a sound tree is scarce enough that state forestry programs collect material from apparently resistant ones. The wood works like walnut but is far softer and lighter, and it does not fetch walnut money.

Black Cherry

Prunus serotina

Where: Best on the Allegheny plateau of Pennsylvania and New York; scattered south.
Bought for: Grade lumber, veneer, furniture stock.
The catch: Wilted cherry leaves are documented to poison cattle and horses. Keep felled tops out of pasture and ask a veterinarian, not a logger.

Ash

Fraxinus americana, F. pennsylvanica

Where: Bottoms and uplands across the East.
Bought for: Flooring, handles, baseball bats, pallets.
The catch: The emerald ash borer has killed ash across most of the range. Standing dead ash degrades quickly and is dangerous to fell.

Hard Maple

Acer saccharum

Where: Northern hardwood forests and the higher Appalachians.
Bought for: Flooring, cabinets, bowling and butcher block.
The catch: White sapwood is what buyers pay for, so felling season and how fast it gets to the mill both matter.

Soft Maple

Acer rubrum, A. saccharinum

Where: Nearly every site in the East, wet or dry.
Bought for: Pallets, furniture frames, pulpwood.
The catch: Red maple has spread across cutover Southern stands. Volume is easy, grade is not.

American Beech

Fagus grandifolia

Where: Coves and moist slopes throughout the East.
Bought for: Pallets, crossties, flooring, firewood.
The catch: Beech bark disease and now beech leaf disease are working through the range. It also sprouts thickly and can take over an understory after a cut.

Sycamore

Platanus occidentalis

Where: Stream banks and bottoms across the East.
Bought for: Pallets, crating, quartersawn specialty lumber.
The catch: Huge volume in a single tree, low grade in most of it, and hollow butts are common.

Hackberry

Celtis occidentalis, C. laevigata

Where: Bottoms, fencerows and town lots across the East; sugarberry takes its place in the Deep South.
Bought for: Pallets and crating, furniture frames, dimension and turning stock, pulpwood.
The catch: The bright sapwood is what a buyer wants, and it grays and stains within weeks of felling in warm weather - hackberry is a species you move to the mill, not one you deck. The witches' broom and nipple galls nearly every tree carries are cosmetic and do not touch the wood.

Eastern Cottonwood

Populus deltoides

Where: Major river bottoms, the Mississippi Valley especially.
Bought for: Pulpwood, pallets, plywood core.
The catch: This is an actual poplar. The tree Southerners call poplar is yellow-poplar, and the two sell for very different money.

Quaking Aspen

Populus tremuloides

Where: Lake States, Northeast, and the Rockies.
Bought for: OSB, pulp, pallets.
The catch: The volume hardwood of the North. Clones sucker heavily after a clearcut, which is how the type regenerates itself.

Red Alder

Alnus rubra

Where: The coastal Northwest - it takes any clearcut, road cut or wet bottom in western Washington and Oregon.
Bought for: Furniture and cabinet stock, plywood and veneer, pallets.
The catch: The commercial hardwood of the West, and on this list because Washington's mills name it. It is short-lived - stands go over-mature and start to rot around sixty years - it discolors if logs sit in the woods, and it fixes nitrogen, which is why foresters treat it as both a soil builder and a weed in a conifer plantation.

Basswood

Tilia americana

Where: Northern hardwoods and Appalachian coves.
Bought for: Carving stock, blinds, millwork, pattern lumber.
The catch: Soft, light, and odorless. A strong nectar tree, which matters if you lease hives.

Yellow & River Birch

Betula alleghaniensis, B. nigra

Where: Yellow birch north and in the high Appalachians; river birch on Southern stream banks.
Bought for: Plywood, flooring, cabinet stock, pulp.
The catch: Yellow birch carries real grade value. River birch is mostly a bank-holding tree with a small pulp market.

American Elm

Ulmus americana

Where: Bottoms and old town streets across the East.
Bought for: Pallets, crating, hockey sticks and bent stock historically.
The catch: Dutch elm disease removed the big ones. What is left is mostly understory-sized.

Full page

Black Locust

Robinia pseudoacacia

Where: Native to the Appalachians, spread nearly everywhere since.
Bought for: Fence posts, decking, mine timbers, firewood.
The catch: Rot resistance without treatment is real and documented. The bark and seeds are toxic to livestock.

Full page

American Chestnut

Castanea dentata

Where: Root sprouts across the old Appalachian range; no timber-sized trees.
Bought for: Nothing standing - salvaged wormy chestnut only.
The catch: The blight still kills the sprouts before they can seed. Anything sold as chestnut lumber is reclaimed.

Full page

Persimmon

Diospyros virginiana

Where: Old fields and fencerows across the South.
Bought for: Shuttles, golf club heads, and specialty turning stock, historically.
The catch: A true ebony relative with almost no market left. Deer value on a hunting tract now outruns timber value.

Sassafras

Sassafras albidum

Where: Old fields and roadsides throughout the East.
Bought for: Fence rails, small-mill boards, firewood.
The catch: Durable in the ground and pleasant to work, but rarely big enough or common enough to sell as a stand.

Trade names on a log deck vary by region and by mill. If a buyer names a species you do not recognize on your own ground, ask him which group he is scaling it in before you agree to a price.

Where the material comes from

AXE USA publishes no research of its own. Everything on these pages is read out of USDA Forest Service, USDA NRCS, land-grant extension, and published historical sources, each linked at the bottom of the page so you can go read the original.

The reference rows above are deliberately short - species, buyers, and the catch. Full pages go up one at a time, read and sourced, rather than all at once; ten are up now, from pine through bald cypress. If the tree standing on your ground is not the one you needed answered, say so.

Before any of these trees comes downWhat OSHA's logging standard and extension publications say about felling and running a saw - the cuts, the hinge, the retreat, the gear, and where to get hands-on training.Tell us which tree is next