Burning palm trunks -- which burn and which don't?

[DoomsDave]

Howdyall:

We all hate to do it, but palms sometimes need to be cut down.

Washies are the most frequent subjects of this treatment, and their wood, I have found, does not want to burn. You try to light it, and it just won't burn on its own, the way, say, dry cedar does. If you put some washie wood in a fireplace with other wood that's nice and hot, it will burn to ashes. It appears to be actually flame retardant, which makes sense, I suppose.

Dypsis lutescens and plumosa trunks, on the other hand, appear to burn much better, especially when dry.

How about the rest of you? What palm trunks have you burned and what happened?

[Dypsisdean]

It's deja vu all over again.

http://www.palmtalk....showtopic=31781

[DoomsDave]

Well, Dean you are perceptive, but I thought this thread should be revisited

In light of my previous and recent experiences.

Palm wood? Burning? Anyone?

[Moose]

Dave - why not carve some Tiki's ?

[DoomsDave]

Dave - why not carve some Tiki's ?

Some of the trunks in question are too small to make anything except micro-tikis.

Also, sometimes the slaughter is so large you end up with more trunks than any (sane) person would want to carve into tikis.

And, some people don't like tikis, and you don't want to wait around to find someone who does.

[Moose]

Dave - why not carve some Tiki's ?

Some of the trunks in question are too small to make anything except micro-tikis.

Also, sometimes the slaughter is so large you end up with more trunks than any (sane) person would want to carve into tikis.

And, some people don't like tikis, and you don't want to wait around to find someone who does.

Guerilla tiki placements will get rid of them. Reduce your carbon footprint and don't burn.

[DoomsDave]

Some people are really bad sports about guerilla tikis, especially when said tikis are big and heavy and look like their mamas . . .

[Eric F]

I find that my Areca catechu trunk burns the minute I put it in the sun

[DoomsDave]

some palms when insulted, get burned . . .

[Hammer]

Are said washie trunks properly dried?

[Mandrew968]

In South Florida, we don't burn too much wood--there are some houses with fireplaces, but those tend to be older houses built by the earlier settlers and more modern construction seems to realize it doesn't get cold enough to warrant building them into contemporary South Florida homes(extravagant mansions aside). We do have fire pits outside--maybe a 2 month stretch of nights where we can take advantage of the cooler nights(minus our indian summers), by the fire. I usually just harvest all of my scrap debris from the yard to burn; delonix regia limbs break constantly and are good tinder. Staghorn fern fronds are a good fire starter, but few things are better than Coconut fibers. Usually when gathering items for a fire, I notice that most of my collection is still wet from our rains...

Dave, most of the time palm trunks are too large to put in the fire and we don't have log splitters around these parts--we just haul them off to the dump or set them out to the curb for the city to pick up. Green doesn't burn and most of our cuttings are green and thus hauled off before drying out; we don't really take into account that we might burn a limb or two when we are cleaning up our yards, and if we did, i think we would rather haul it off to the dump, than leave it in the yard to look unsightly.

That's my take on it, Dave.