I went out this morning to wander around the woods at my grandparents place. First time 'in the wild' looking for stuff for myself so I'm sure I was walking past most of the good stuff. Spent a good couple of hours and came back with 2 things which I trunk chopped. I don't even know what one of them was but I got carried away haha! There's a lot of places down there I didn't have time to look around, an area near a well used deer-run which might have some munched stuff.
Can anyone ID this guy? Looks kinda like Hawthorne to me but it's much darker bark, the older growth had similar long spikes but I might have to wait until it's leafed out to see what it is.
I found another smaller one which had a bit more movement in the bottom (still kinda straight I know) and trunk chopped it, marked it with some string and I'll check it next spring, if it's got some decent growth I might dig it up then. Might not have cut it low enough though.
I'm 95% sure this one is a Hawthorne though! Was a pretty small one growing sideways so I thought I'd have it up and then clean it up when I got home. Unfortunately I don't really know quite what to do about the roots yet so I cut back the real thick stuff and put it in a trainer to get the roots going for a year or so. I'm thinking I can then cut back some of the thicker crap again. Or maybe play with angling it over a rock or something... no idea but I got a while to think about it or have someone tell me it's a waste of time.
I found this old Hawthorne in the meadow behind the woods, the ground is incredibly boggy especially with the rain we've been having so the ground is very easy to dig. Didn't touch it for now because I was going to ask whether it would have any potential - if I cut it all back considerably to the main trunks and then left it to regrow for a year or so. Or am I just getting carried away and murdering trees for no reason? Seems more likely
This last thing was about 6 foot high growing right in the middle of an area which is marshy year-round and in the summer is covered in waist high Iris and reeds. I don't even know how it decided it was a good place to grow, if you stand still for a few minutes you sink a surprising amount... decided to whack the top off and dig it up. Probably NOT the way to collect material but I really liked the bark and the buds seems fairly small, growing close enough together to suggest it isn't a large leaf. Again I'll wait for it to pop to work out what it is
It was incredibly easy to dig up, just a spade around it and then slipped underneath and the whole thing was loose in about 60 seconds, I've no idea how it grew to the size it did without blowing over. At the moment it's bagged up as I ran out of light - going to get it out of the silty bog water it's in tomorrow, there's a LOT of iris growing around the roots to remove.