Which are your preferred tree species to grow your own fuel forest?

Hey Pablo, interesting topic. Would you add a column for "coppicig possible" or something?
Productivity in weight per area per year would indeed be super interesting.
Also another column for "other uses" for stacking functions

Yes, they have been coppicing for firewood in places for over a thousand years, so finding good locally adapted plants for that approach makes a huge amount of sense. ( Coppice Agroforestry by Mark Krawczyk : review here https://permies.com/wiki/203188/Coppice-Agroforestry-Tending-Trees-Product )

I'll also suggest that people know the ecosystem requirements of trees - some will hog water to get that excellent growth, which then denies water to native, locally adapted trees.

And please don't plant monocultures - most coppiced areas use more than one species, and only chop relatively small areas on any one year, and have been shown to improve diversity of birds and amphibians, whereas monocultures tend to reduce biodiversity.

Jay Angler wrote:Yes, they have been coppicing for firewood in places for over a thousand years, so finding good locally adapted plants for that approach makes a huge amount of sense. ( Coppice Agroforestry by Mark Krawczyk : review here https://permies.com/wiki/203188/Coppice-Agroforestry-Tending-Trees-Product )

I'll also suggest that people know the ecosystem requirements of trees - some will hog water to get that excellent growth, which then denies water to native, locally adapted trees.

And please don't plant monocultures - most coppiced areas use more than one species, and only chop relatively small areas on any one year, and have been shown to improve diversity of birds and amphibians, whereas monocultures tend to reduce biodiversity.

Coppice Agroforestry is a great reference for this. It builds on data presented in Edible Forest Gardens textbooks.

Personally I am planting hazels, hybrid poplars, Chinese chestnuts and chinquapin chestnuts, black locusts, and Osage orange. These are not all only for firewood but most of them are intended for resprout-forestry and firewood eventually. Especially the seedling hazelnuts, locust, and Osage orange - what isn't usable for garden construction will go to wood stoves.

My understanding is that calorific value is pretty closely related to density, so denser wood ('harder' in popular parlance) has more calorific value.

My favourites so far are Alder (Alnus glutinosa) and Silver Birch (Betula pendula) - They have been the fastest growing coppiceable trees for me here. Spruce also grows fast, but is cut once rather than 'cut and come again'! Alder has the added advantage of being a Nitrogen fixing tree.

I have a willow hybrid of some sort (I don't know what as it came as a cutting) which grows very quickly too. I'm hoping this will be even more productive for me in the wetter areas. I just cut a bit of it this year as it was damaged in summer winds last year - We'll see how well it burns.

My preferred tree is Black Locust.   They're hardy here in Western NY,  are great nitrogen fixers and grow relatively fast and make great firewood and fence posts.  The only negatives I've found is that they are harder to split than ash, and the thorns on the smaller branches are sharp and obnoxious, but nowhere near as bad as those on the Osage Orange trees I have.  Although the Osage makes a great hot burning firewood, it's thorns are really nasty - it was planted originally as a hedge fence, known as being "bull tough and hog tight" - and once mature, getting rid of it is difficult.  Our native Ash trees were a staple firewood for a long time, being hot burning and easy to split (straight grained), but have fallen prey to the Emerald Ash Borer.  I'm cutting the diseased ones now for firewood, and have hopes for the future for some of the stumps which have sprouted new growth.  Hope springs eternal.

I would try some honey locust. Black locust is nice too, though honey locust also has delicious “honey” in the pods that can be eaten come fall. I’ve also been noticing how green the grass grows under the nearby honey locusts. Their leaves let in a lot of light, too, but so do black locust. Both would be good for growing other plants underneath, whether fruits, herbs and vegetables, etc. I’ve noticed milkweed and nettle, good fiber plants, also growing beneath black locust.

Depends on context, but if it was deforested or otherwise degraded land around here I would plant a mix of:

- Red Alder, with one to accompany every other tree for nitrogen fixation and quick growth of wood that is pretty good for heating and excellent for cooking.
- Madrone for heating fuel, as it is the best PNW native for btu’s per cord.
- Doug fir for prolific growth of one of the better softwoods for heating, especially if measured by years of growth. It is one of the fastest growing trees.
- Fruit (pome and stone) and nut (chestnut, walnut, white oak) trees for food for people and nutrient cycling wildlife while they produced biomass.

Siberian elm is a fast growing hardwood.  It makes great firewood, if you like hardwoods.  I knew a man once who swore aspen made the best firewood.  I never could understand that.

Siberian elm survives in arid conditions, though benefits from water.  It is so prolific that in my region many consider it a “trash” tree.

Goats love it.  When it flowers in late winter honey bees feed on it, and when its seed is developing, is green, the seed is good food for humans…

I know it stump sprouts, but don’t know if it could be managed as coppice or pollard.

The grain is beautiful.  The wood is suitable for turning, or furniture or construction.

Black locust is my go-to fuel species, for all the reasons listed above: high BTU value, multipurpose tree, fast growing, easy to coppice.  In addition, I am right at the edge of its native range (southern Appilachia, in my case), so I know it will grow reliably for me.  I am just a tiny wee bit down in the foothills compared to its ideal range, so my trees tend to loose leaves at the end of a hot summer, only to resprout them in the autumn.  But they've still proven unstoppable and fast growing.  They provided me with good, quick shade back when my property was largely bare and needed it.  Now, I am generally thinning them out and cutting them back, as I have too much shade.

Unfortunately, the wood-burning devices I planted them to serve aren't online yet.  But in the meantime, black locust makes great biochar for me.

Similar to how I'd answer any other "what are your preferred species for..." question: It's the ones that like it here.

My main fuel woods here in the PNW are doug fir, big leaf maple, and wild cherry.

Doug fir, because it was planted here at something like 400 stems per acre back in the '00s, and removing the right trees of it is good for forest health.

Acer macrophylum, because it burns really nicely when seasoned and basically coppiced itself up from stumps back when the place was clearcut, so I've got these ancient root systems happily pumping out new trunks as fast as i can cut them off, if I'm gentle about not taking the whole thing.  The maples are also practically magical for accelerating the decomposition of any biomass that I pile underneath them, because they dump so many leaves on it. Handy trees.

Wild cherry burns ok and the bark makes incredible tinder, and it creeps root-wise back in to any area where I don't explicitly keep it out. Not as fun as it sounds, but in areas where I've had to push the conifer treeline way back for winter daylight to the home, cherry thickets pop up and it only takes a handful of years for the trunks to grow to firewood sizes.

Once in awhile I get some red alder from coppicing and pollarding projects, but it doesn't  volunteer  as profusely as the other species and its highest value to me is as a living tree fixing nitrogen.

Looking at a map makes it seem like I'm in the range for oaks, but I'm actually at a higher elevation than they tend to volunteer at. I've been planting oaks, along with chestnuts and butternuts and walnuts and hickory, in the hope that they start self-seeding over the coming decades... but that's a long game, and longer to get the kind of surplus where harvesting them to burn starts making sense.

Willows are my "carbon crop" trees. I coppice and pollard them, using the poles for garden stakes and biochar, with the added benefit of fodder for the sheep. I can either feed them directly if I cut in the summer or early autumn for drought fodder, or dry them for tree hay to feed out during winter. For actual firewood, I like Tasmanian blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) because it comes up from root suckers without being planted (could be weedy but hasn't been trouble here), grows fast, fixes nitrogen, pollards and coppices fairly reliably, yields a dense, high-heat fuel, and plays nicely with surrounding trees.