After our timber sale it is interesting to see the stumps and which trees had rot and which trees were solid.

The above stump was a large Bur Oak located low on a hillside. It was really growing out to the south toward sunshine and would fail at sometime in the future because of that lean. This tree showed no decay.

The above Bur Oak was close to the first picture of a Bur Oak stump. It also was leaning out into the sun and would fail. Again no decay.

The above stump is a very large Black Walnut which was by our picnic area. This tree had a ton of heavy branches at it’s top because it had been growing in an open area for the last 30 – 40 years. No decay in this Black Walnut.

The Black Walnut stump above was growing in prime bottom-land soil by the Zumbro River here in Mantorville Minnesota. About 16 of the Black Walnuts grew by the river, this being one of the biggest. Again no decay.

One of the reasons for our timber sale was to get some value from Ash trees before they started dying from the Emerald Ash Bore. The stump above was one of the biggest. After cutting down a number of Ash trees during the past few years I was surprised to see no decay in this very big Ash. Many of the Ash I had cut down had decay.

We only cut 2 or 3 Black Cherry. But they had no decay. All the Black Cherry grow with a lean for some reason. I have rarely seen a straight Black Cherry.

The above is one of the many Sugar Maple which we cut. Our 8-10 acre limestone ridge has many Sugar Maple’s. We have so many Sugar Maples that they block sunlight from reaching the forest floor. That was the main reason we thinned them out.

The above Red Oak was what is called a Wolf Tree. A tree which takes up a lot of space but doesn’t have good form or value. I thought this tree would have quite a bit of rot. Surprised that it was pretty free of rot.

Now we get into what the majority of Red Oak’s looked like. This big Red Oak was pictured in a recent post with my Son-In-Law next to it. You can see the decay. Also note the cut stump/trunk in the background. That was cut out of the usable log because of rot.

Another Red Oak with rot. This was a double Red Oak.

This was another very large Red Oak. Again we see a good portion of rot in what looks like two different areas of the trunk.

This was the White Oak from a previous post. Again, the White/Bur Oaks don’t appear to have any decay.

The last stump picture. A very rotten Red Oak. From the outside you couldn’t detect that the middle had massive amounts of rot. This could be a dangerous tree to cut. Glad that our logger didn’t have any problems during the timber cutting.

This is a great Red Oak with a clear trunk up at least 32 feet. It was big enough to cut in the timber sale, but we decided to keep it. It will really grow now that the canopy has been opened up. It also has great genetics which may produce acorns which will grow other great Red Oaks.