Old mystery wood

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Chasper

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This picture if the end view of a partial hand hewn beam that came from a barn nearly 150 years old. I count about 100 growth rings in a four inch line from the heart to the upper right at the clip end of the pen.
The pen is made from an adjucent section of this same beam. The barn is located in southern Indiana and I feel certain that the wood would have come from very nearby.
The full beam is six inches by six inches and six feet long. All the other beams in this barn are shaped from full logs, and since the heart is here, I'm speculating that the full tree would not have been much larger diameter than this piece.
As far as I know, dogwood is the only wood that is native to southern Indiana that grows this slowly, and this is definitely not dogwood. Could this be a variety of elm from pre-Dutch elm disease time?
The wood is very heavy and hard as you would expect from something this dense.
Anybody know what it is? Thanks

tn_Growth%20R.jpg
 
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Could be elm. Elm has an acrid smell when freshly cut - try that approach to see if it is.

Cheers.
 
There is no smell, but then it was cut 150 years of so ago so the smell could have disapated. I've been reading about elm, I don't think it grows slow enough, the wood is too heavy and the color too dark (although very old wood can be unexpected colorc).
What about redbud? It grows very slow, it is dense and the wood is the right color. Anybody every cut redwood?
Butternut, Hophornbeam, Mulberry, Chestnut oak, red maple, paw paw?
 
Frank,
The piece I'm trying to ID is definitely is not poplar, but I did rescue some nice poplar from this barn. I use a lot of poplar in one of my day jobs (casket making) and the stuff we get is mostly yellow-white, quite often a pale green/yellow streak, and occasionally a nice brown/black/purple mineral streak. This old barn poplar is nearly all a vivid green. Occasionally it has some spectacular mineral streaks and occasionally a little yellow-white.
I think this is the same species as modern poplar, but from old growth trees it was mostly green. My grandfather (born 1885) used to tell me that "yellow poplar" was totally termite resistant, but that there isn't any yellow poplar around anymore. I think yellow poplar was his name for old growth tulip poplar and the young stuff is not as resistant.

It isn't the type of hickory I'm familiar with, wood tone is too dark and the growth rings are too regular and distinct.
 
Jerry, I have some chestnut from Oregon. The tree was very old and had to come down for safety reasons. When I turned the wood, it looked like white oak. I finished the pen with CA. The chestnut turned to the same color as your pen. The grain on chestnut is open grain like oak. If you can see open grain in the wood, good chance it is chestnut. From the picture I could not tell about the wood grain.
Ellis
 
Chestnut is not out of the question, the color is about right and it an open grain. But the density is much heavier than chestnut, it is much harder than chestnut; you would have to hit it pretty hard with a hammer to leave a dent. Also the growth rings are so close together, in part of the tree is it well over 25 growth rings per inch of radius.

Weren't chestnuts big and fast growing?
 
what about well seasoned Osage Orange? My understanding is that the yellow turns about that color brown with age, and if this has been cut 100+ years ago it fits.
 
It does have the look of well seasoned osage orange, I have a primative bow that I made, it is the same color now that it has aged. However, osage is not native in Indiana. It is only native in OK and Texas, it is only so widely dispersed because it was used all over the country as a hedge to fence off pasture land.

This tree was at least 100 years old and growing at the time of the Civil War, dating it back to at least pre-Revolutionary War. I doubt that it could have been planted around here that long ago. Also the growth rings in osage are not so close.
 
I'm headed toward concluding that I have a piece of American Hornbeam. I know that there used to be a lot of them in a woods lot near where the barn is falling down.
I found a picture at this site that looks a lot like what I have.
www.lib.ncsu.edu/.../hough/WoodsPart_II.html
The wood seems to be hard enough, slow growing enough, native, and the right color.
 
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