Muscle Tree

These trees always look very muscular to me.   It's an ironwood tree. Carpinus caroliniana - or the hop hornbeam.  They're very hard and were used to make ship parts. 

We have a lot of these in our woods.  They aren't very large, but they take a long time to grow.  I liked the moss on the bottom of this one.

Ironwood Trees

I grew up in northern Indiana in a lovely house on Ironwood Rd. but I never saw an ironwood tree until we moved to this place.

Our woods are full of them.  Carpinus caroliniana.  They're also called blue beech and hornbeam trees.  They love deep moist soil along creeks and swamps.  

The wood is hard and the trunks of young trees look like muscles.   They're sort of hexagonal in places.   Very cool.   [And hard to photograph, so sorry there's no pic.]

But they have very interesting catkins, too.   Catkins are what you call those droopy tree flowers.  

These look like little lanterns when the sun hits them.   If I were crafty, I'd make little lanterns like these to go over twinkle lights.  How cool would that be?!

I'm not convinced that these catkins are from the  Carpinus caroliniana. Usually those have a thumb that sticks off the top of each petal and they turn brown faster.   These leaves are right, but the trunk is more beech like and less muscle-y than true ironwoods.   

If anyone can identify, shout out in the comments.