February 8th is fondly known as Iowa Day so we thought it would be a great idea to showcase the beautiful and abundant trees that we have grown so fond of. All of our wood is sourced locally, so we have become quite familiar with a couple of the heavy hitters including Black Walnut, Ash, Maple, and Oak. Keep on reading to hear all about these trees and the gorgeous wood that they produce
Black Walnut Trees
A fan favorite tree species across the world, black walnut offers a great contrast to traditionally lighter woods with its deep chocolate colored heartwood next to its yellow-gray sapwood. Commonly used for custom furniture, cabinetry, gunstocks, turning, and veneer, black walnut is a wood that will be put to great use in many applications.
Due to its popularity, black walnut will typically be priced higher than other woods found in Iowa, but it is definitely not without cause. While it doesn’t happen frequently, you can find walnut slabs with all sorts of figuring, such as curl, rat tail, birdseye, and many others.
Maple Trees
One of the most consistent and trustworthy trees found in Iowa are Maple. With a lovely golden white to reddish brown tone, maple wood can offer a nice and bright coloring that will match with tons of decor. Even though this tree species is often overlooked as a boring wood, maple wood can boast some really interesting character including curl, flame, and quilting, but it can also have a feature called spalting.
Spalting is any kind of wood coloration that is caused when fungi colonise the wood and extract nutrients from it, leaving behind dark dotted and lined patterns . Although this is technically a sign of decay, spalting adds a beautiful rustic contrast that is highly sought after. While maple isn’t the only wood type that spalts, it is by far the most common! Other species including sycamore, hickory, oak, pine, hackberry, and more can have the same or similar spalting to maple.
Oak Trees
Oak trees have been considered one of the most popular hardwoods in the US for many years. You can see it within almost any home as cabinets, flooring, tables, chairs and more. The most commonly found oaks in Iowa are red oak and white oak. These species of oak are very similar in most of their characteristics such as the porosity, density, and workability.
Though it is mostly considered a light to medium tone brown, oak’s heartwood can often throw slightly different tones. Red oak tends to have a reddish tone where white oak may have a more olive green tone. While its color is one of the factors that attract people to oak’s wood, another interesting feature is its porosity. The pores of oak wood are so large that some people have been able to use an oak dowel as a straw!
How Our Live Edge Logs and Trees are Sourced
All of our logs are local to Iowa; some of the logs come from urban removals where they were taken down for new construction, some from storm damage or any other reason a homeowner might not want that tree in their yard, and others come from sustainable timber management. Most of the wood and tree tear downs would have been shredded into free city mulch, but the logs were saved and milled, and are now ready to be used to make something great!
To Wrap it All Up...
These are just the most popular wood types on our website and tree species in Iowa, but we have lots more to offer! Stay updated on our inventory updates and more by following us on Facebook & Instagram and subscribing to our email and SMS lists!