The Firewood Poem, accurate?

I stumbled on this today. Is this Poem accurate on quality of firewood?

The Firewood Poem
Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut's only good they say,
If for logs 'tis laid away.
Make a fire of Elder tree,
Death within your house will be;
But ash new or ash old,
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold

Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last,
it is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E'en the very flames are cold
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for a queen with golden crown

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke,
Apple wood will scent your room
Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom
Oaken logs, if dry and old
keep away the winter's cold
But ash wet or ash dry
a king shall warm his slippers by.
By Lady Celia Congreve

From here.

pretty much? i’d say you need to dry american beech longer than a year, but maybe european beech dries faster. i largely agree with the rest of the poem…though birch can be fine in a mix with other wood…

I hope not. Was thinking about chopping an alder grove threatening to fall on our villages WiFi and electricity cables. It does burn quickly without much heat. It won't have ambers through the night in the morning. But burning it in early autumn and late winter was my plan. But this poem gives me the Creepies. Inviting death I won't.

elder and alder are different beasts.

The link says 18th century and I'm pretty sure they had proper fireplaces with chimneys by then. I was wondering if they were talking about wood toxicity with the elderberry wood. Here there is some talk about not burning Arbutus (Medrona) because it contains "the blood of our ancestors", but what it actually contains is high levels of chemicals that result in a lot of creosote which increases the risks of chimney fires.

That poem is a real gem.

The best parts:

Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.

Apple wood will scent your room
Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom

Birch is the primary firewood in northern Scandinavia... But then again, most of the good firewood species (including ash) don't naturally go this far north, and we generally have very few tree species. Birch, spruce and pine are the only ones you generally find enough of for a "staple" supply of firewood, and birch is probably the best of them.

the poem definitely wasn’t written with rmh’s in mind.

I always thought the poem may have been the work of a woodcutter who happened to have a lot of ash on hand one year.

ash is legitimately good firewood, in that it isn’t useless when it’s green or damp. that part is true. with good well-dried wood there are definitely a few i would put above it though.