Filling raised beds/what kind of tree is this?

Greetings everyone,

By way of quick introduction:
Hello, and thank you for reading my post!
I'm still pretty new to permaculture. I'm a certified California Naturalist, half witted vegetable gardener, and long time native plant gardener....although all of this is my second field of study, and there's soooooooo much to learn!

So I'd say I'm not a total newbie; but in all honesty with respect to permaculture, I'm RIGHT next door to a total newbie.

I'm located in zone 12b in Southern California, USA.

That said, I have these new raised garden beds. Two of them.
They're 8'x4'x2.5'.

The reason I'm doing raised beds is that my soil has tested with some lead in it, so I'm moving my root crops and leafy greens to raised beds, while I attempt to dilute the lead with lots of mulch, lock it up with potash, and also bio-remediate with brassica, sunflowers and scented geraniums.

But that's kind of a tangent (it's all connected, right?)

So I'm looking for wood to hugulkulture my raised beds. I have maybe around 10-12 cubic feet of ash tree that was cut from my property three years ago. Obviously that's already at the bottom of my two beds right now. I know what it is, it's nontoxic and it's aged.
But I need a lot more wood! I can't put in the soil and compost I have until I solve this wood issue.

I picked up this wood from one of my neighbors (see photos).  Apparently someone hacked the heck out of this tree, just last weekend.  
All she could tell me is that it is "some sort of Asian tree" and the wood seems to have no sap.
Posting on iNaturalist and asking my local arborist did not yield any results as to what kind of tree this might be.

Since my beds are so large, and since hugulkulture has such great benefits, I do want to put a bunch of wood in the bottom of my beds.
In this large urban environment, I'm having difficulty finding good wood for this purpose.

Does anyone know what kind of tree this is?
If this is decent wood for hugulkulture, could I go ahead and put the wood in the bottom of my beds even though it's fresh cut?
Is it a resprouting risk, or risk of leaking plant-killing chemicals?
If it's a few feet down near the bottom of the beds (with plenty of soil between it and the plants) would that be OK?
I have both heartwood and smaller branches.

Thank you so much in advance for any suggestions.
This is a biiiiiiiig forum/website, it's kind of overwhelming, but I'm looking forward to diving into it. I think if I read/knew 1/8 of the things on here, I could be a Permie PhD!

Hi Sage!

I don't recognize this tree, but you might be able to identify it using this key for California trees: https://urbantreekey.calpoly.edu/

If it's not in that key, I'm happy to look in my Japanese tree books. Do you know anything about the flowers and fruit if any?

The natural shape of the tree can be helpful in identification. Maybe your neighbor has a photo of the tree before it was accosted.😁 From a family gathering or some such thing.

Looks a lot like an Avacado tree maybe.
I don"t know how high the lead content is but might a neighbors tree contain the lead because its grown in the same soil area?
I know leafy greens pull some lead from soil,  flowering vegetables are supposedly safer to eat....
 Sound scary to me.

Sage,

Good job on going for the raised beds.  By now all of my beds are raised beds and they work great for me.  Mine are only about 1’ tall at present, but I may raise this to 2’ in time.

Also, great job going for the wood to grow in.  Sadly, I can’t identify the type of tree in your picture, but the idea of utilizing whatever wood you can get your hands on is a great approach.

I totally understand the difficulty in getting chips from electrical companies.  3 years ago I signed up for a chip-drop service.  I still have not gotten a call back.  With that in mind, is there any possibility that you can get your hands on wood that you could run through a chipper?  My approach is to trim my living fence every 1-2 years where I trim back the hedge to keep it under control.  I then collect this wood and rent a chipper and turn the whole pile into woodchips destined for my garden beds.  Just this spring I chipped up enough chips to keep all of my beds supplied with woodchips for the next 2 years or so.  

All of my chips are destined to eventually be consumed by wine cap mushrooms.  The resulting compost is amazingly fertile and I highly recommend this approach if you are so inclined.  I was amazed by how easily this technique works.

I might well have access to more wood than you, but maybe you can find an option that will work.  Can you find a supplier of hardwood chips?  I did this a couple of times and it works very well.

I hope this is helpful,

Eric