How long do burnt trees stay around?

Question

So I started out my game in a forest biome, found a pig village with a Pig King, some spider nests nearby, plus a nice clump of berry bushes, and I figured I'd set up my base in that area. It seemed perfect.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck. Or rather, lightning did. It was the night of Day 4, and I hadn't found enough gold for a lightning rod yet.

All I have left is a whole lot of this, and I think the fire's actually still going:

I'm trying to make some lemonade out of lemons here and look on the bright side: I have a crapload of charcoal now, right? But I don't know how long these burnt trees will stick around.

I know that Ash will blow away/disintegrate very soon after it appears, but I don't know if burnt trees will do the same. Will these trees stick around indefinitely for me to harvest charcoal from as needed? Or will they eventually disappear if I don't grab it fast enough?

Answer 1

Burnt trees, like the stumps of chopped ones, are out of the normal tree lifecycle. This means that a burnt tree will remain in that state indefinitely, until chopped.

Once a tree gets burned down it basically becomes a new gatherable resource (charcoal) in the same way you gather twigs from saplings, with the difference that you can't plant a burnt tree.

Anyway, if you have some space left in your inventory and you've lost many trees in the fire, it's advisable to gather the charcoal instead of waiting, since chopping down those trees has a (small) chance to yield some pine cones to help you regrow a forest in a short time.