# How do I ID old growth oak?



## Nurumkin (Dec 9, 2009)

I was talking to a guy who was telling me about old growth oak. Based on what I think I have in my garage I may have a couple thousand BF of it. How can I ID it for sure?


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## Mizer (Mar 11, 2010)

What was he telling you about it? Do you mean slow growth? Slow growth would mean that the growth rings would be close together like this.







Fast growth would look more like this.






.


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## TexasTimbers (Oct 17, 2006)

Nurumkin, those are good examples Mizer shows, and here's another example of slow growth, which in this case it is also old growth (virgin forest never logged). It was harvested from the East Texas Pineywoods in the early 1880s so it was harvested from old growth forests not second growth. The ETPW had not been harvested to any large scale degree prior to the 1830s, and the tree that produced this 3 x 12 joist was obviously not less than several hundred years old. 


The species is pine and I would guess longleaf. I haven't ID'd it yet though I have the means to do so.

















The block is 3" x 12" x 12" (3BF) and weighs exactly 13 pounds or 4.333333 pounds per BF. And if my math is correct that's 52 lbs. ft.³ And at ~ 130 years old I figure it has fully dried. :smile:


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## Daren (Oct 14, 2006)

Here a is a slow grower, from my old gallery here.









Since we are talking oak there is a ring count difference between red and white. White will (most often) have 2X the number of rings per inch as red.


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## Nurumkin (Dec 9, 2009)

*re*

I am not exactly sure what I have then. It doesn't look like the fast growth, but there aren't as many rings as your pic of slow growth. I counted them and there are about 15 rings per inch on the outside of the pieces but as you get towards the middle there are more like 25


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## Daren (Oct 14, 2006)

If you read my comment above about red vs white, for sure if it is white oak it is nothing too out of the ordinary. That is relatively tight for red, at least northern red which I am most familiar...and there are ~400 species of "oak" so that muddies things too.


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## buroak (Mar 25, 2010)

I have always refered to old growth as virgin woods. Or woods that have not been logged out. Old growth trees would be tall straight and close together. I think Groth rings can sometimes be misleading. When a saeson is dry the grouth ring is tight. Also a tree in a not so good location may have tighter grouth rings. To be sure about old grouth you would need to know where it came from.


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## TexasTimbers (Oct 17, 2006)

buroak said:


> I have always refered to old growth as virgin woods. Or woods that have not been logged out.


Me too. I assigned my pine to the class of old growth because I knew where it came from, and that it was from a forest never previously logged. I also agree that even old growth trees depending on species and location, seasonal variations etc are a factor in the distance ring to ring. 

But when I think of "old growth" or "second growth", like in the pine I posted, those trees had rings 10x closer together (or closer) even in years with lots of rain than the hybrids they grow today. I've seen rings 1/4" apart on the junk they sell in the lumber yard. Your point is well taken though.


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