Staghorn Sumac for firewood ?

VigIIPeaBurner wrote:It sounds to me like your friend might have mistaken Ailanthus, or more commonly called the Chinese Tree of Heaven for sumac. It happens a lot. Ailanthus was introduced from China as an ornamental There are male and female trees and the leaves and bark are similar to sumac but the flowers are different. I had a stand of it at my last house and the fire wood isn't half bad. It was easily 50' high, probably higher and alomost 20" dia. The stuff is invasive and grows quickly after the ground is disturbed if there's a tree with viable seeds nearby. The seeds blow around like maple seeds. If it's 15" diameter, I doubt it's staghorn sumac- the stuff with red cone shaped clusters, is more shrub like in size. BTW, some people make a tea out of the staghorn cluster. Poision sumac has white berries, not red cone shaped clusers. Like Smitty said, the poision variety likes wet spots. I can vouch for how nasty the blisters get

Edit - if this is what you have, 2 dump loads for $40 is a STEAL. It's burn temperature is somewhere between black walnut and white ash. I burned quite a few cords of this over the years.

mary14889 wrote:I joined this forum because I will be cutting up a limb of a big sumac on my property that fell over and i was trying to find out if I can use it for firewood. The base of it is about 12" in diameter and it's only about 12 years old because it came up on the spot where an old pear tree was taken down after being hit by lightning. So I wouldn't be surprised to find one 15" in diameter. I'll take a closer look on hikes from now on when I encounter one. The one in my yard is about 30 feet high- almost as tall as the pear tree it replaced. There are several limbs coming up from the same spot and naturally it was the biggest one that came down.