Purple Heart or Red Cedar?

ER Cedar, the bark is another clue.

Purple heart samples:

Sonny

Looks to me like eastern red cedar (sometimes called swamp cedar but generally real swamp cedar is eastern white cedar). Purpleheart is tighter grained, and weighs about 50-55 lb /cu ft - about twice as dense as cedar. The sapwood streaks through the heartwood are a halmark of eastern red cedar - or aromatic cedar. It is actually a Juniper while many other cedars are actually a cyprus.

CEDAR! Another give away, cedar is relatively a soft wood, purple heart is not.

Purple Heart

Sniff it.

At first read of subject line "I know what a Purple Heart is for, What's a Red Cedar awarded for?"

Well, considering the piece is 2300 miles from me, I won't be giving it a hardness test anytime soon. ;-)

My son, who lives is Las Vegas, got it in a pile of firewood that he thinks came from Utah. There's not a lot firewood growing near Vegas. He had paid for that load, but...

He lucked out a couple of days ago. He's a real estate agent and one of his partner's called him. He had a buyer that just closed on a house with a whole bunch of seasoned firewood that he didn't want.

He ended up with 3 pickup truck loads, piled high, and loaded for him by the new owner (contractor with a front loader). He wanted to pay the guy

The guy was quite happy with that "payment".

Well, considering the piece is 2300 miles from me, I better have a good sense of smell!

Well the bark will be splintery too, on cedar. But,, that is cedar.

And FWIW purple heart does not grow here, in North America. It grows in the area between Mexico and Brazil.