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       Wood enthusiasts interested in sourcing timber from local trees will have a chance this weekend, when the Montgomery County parks department hosts its third annual urban wood sale, offering buyers the chance to purchase wood salvaged from area trees.

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       Among the offerings — walnut, cherry, poplar, oak, mulberry, cypress and ash, according to a Montgomery Parks statement — will be celebrity timber: wood salvaged from Maryland’s historic Linden Oak, thought to have been more than 300 years old when it was felled in July.

       Hundreds of failing trees are removed from Montgomery County each year, officials said — recycled into wood chips, mulch and firewood through county programs. The wood at the sale — kiln-dried, planed or air-dried — will be sold in slabs of different lengths and thicknesses ranging from three-quarters of an inch to three inches.

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       Montgomery Parks Urban Forester Patrick Harwood said the sale raised $45,000 for the agency last year, when about 500 customers purchased approximately 20,000 board feet of lumber. (One board foot of lumber is 1 inch thick and 12 inches square.) He said generally walnut is the most expensive and ash or poplar the cheapest.

       “We’re not buying the wood. We’re just taking the wood we would normally grind into mulch,” Harwood said. “We’re taking that and just processing it to the highest order of value.”

       The remains of the historic, centuries-old Linden Oak tree will also be on offer. Once thought to be Montgomery County’s largest white oak, the tree, which lived at Beach Drive and Rockville Pike in North Bethesda, was said to have been a seedling a generation before George Washington’s birth.

       Linden Oak sawed down after standing tall as one of Maryland’s oldest trees

       Montgomery County's 300 year old Linden Oak tree was sawed down July 18 in Bethesda, Md., after authorities deemed it a safety risk. The wood will be turned int (Video: Samantha Latson, Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)

       “Everybody and their grandmother is interested in wood from that tree,” Harwood said. Alas, only green wood from the Linden Oak will be available this year, he said — buyers at future sales may be able to purchase wood from the tree that has gone to the kiln.

       Tom Darone, president of the Washington Woodworkers Guild, said working with urban wood can have drawbacks. Awkward bends in urban trees can be difficult to work with, and nails — or bullets — embedded in trees can chew up saw blades.

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       However, some trees such as prized “backyard exotics” — redbud, dogwood, persimmon and smaller fruitwood trees — aren’t on offer at home improvement stores.

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       “You’re not going to find that in a lumber yard,” he said.

       Acorn by acorn, volunteers gather seeds to help save forests

       Mike Galvin is the director of the SavATree Consulting Group, who served as the coordinator of a project to reclaim wood from abandoned warehouses and homes in Baltimore. Cities can be the source of quality lumber, he said. Baltimore is the northernmost city where valuable old-growth yellow pine can be salvaged, for example.

       “This does not exist in nature anymore,” he said. “If you want it, you’ve got to get it out of those buildings.”

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       Keeping wood out of landfills benefits the environment, according to Galvin. Just as people enjoy the benefits of living trees — beauty, shade, water filtration, oxygen — trees can continue to benefit people in death by being turned into homes, furniture or even guitars.

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       Other construction materials, including asphalt and concrete, have a high rate of recycling, Galvin said. Urban wood can, too, and sales like Montgomery County’s help.

       “This material — it’s all over the place,” he said. “It’s here and it’s ours.”

       The sale will be held Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to noon, or while supplies last, officials said, at the Montgomery Parks Green Farm Maintenance Facility at 8301 Turkey Thicket Drive in Gaithersburg. Prices will vary between $5 and $400, and proceeds will benefit Montgomery Parks’ recycling programs.

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