Pine is great for kindling and for bonfires, but bad for fireplaces. I have burn holes in my rug to prove it; yes, I should probably buy a new rug at some point, and this is proof to everybody out there that "free" wood isn't always free.
I burn 100% fireplace, no stove/boiler/insert/etc., and routinely burn 10-15 hour days, each day, on the weekend, enough that my chimney brick (main floor, down into basement, and up through the 2nd level) and surrounding plaster walls are still kicking out heat a day or two later. Over the past few years, based upon what I can get my hands on locally, I've made a bit of a study of what works for fireplace use and what does not. Below are some observations.
The good wood/bad wood charts that apply to stoves do not apply equally to fireplaces, especially for "ambiance" fires where you aren't building up a full coal bed. I rarely burn these short-duration fires, but I keep this in mind when sending friends/neighbors home with a bundle of wood for an after-dinner fire or something like that. There is also the consideration of what sort of fire starting procedure the fireplace operator is going to use. My experience has been that most occasional fireplace users don't have wood that is dry enough to light easily, and they then struggle to get things going, and this has to be a consideration in terms of wood species and split sizes if you're selling to this market, or you'll end up with unhappy customers. Sure you or I could get the wood going in nothing flat, but that's because we know what we're doing. Not everybody does, and this has to be kept in mind if you're aiming to sell for fireplace folks.
-I have found that catalpa, properly seasoned, makes a surprisingly good ambiance fireplace wood - cheery flame, light and easy to handle, burns down within a reasonable time. This surprised me, since everybody said it was rubbish and stunk like piss when burned. It goes quickly, though, and puts off very little heat.
-White oak, honey locust, paper birch, and walnut do not make particularly good fireplace woods - it is hard to get them dry enough, especially the larger chunks, for hiss-free fireplace burning. They work fine when burned with other stuff, or when split smaller, or where you have a good coal bed to quickly drive out the h2o that didn't come out when drying outdoors.
-Ash is very good, and would be the perfect fireplace wood hands-down except that it does pop and throw crap from time to time. The popping tends to be more frequent than the spark/debris throwing, though. My wife, who is a light sleeper, gets mad as hell when I put ash on the fire after she goes to bed.
-Red oak, hard maple, and soft maple tend to work well when properly dried. If you get it really good-n-dry, then you're golden with these, and can probably light them up right off your Zippo.
-Cherry is good, especially split small, otherwise the last good size chunk of cherry that goes in on the fire tends not to burn down to powdery ash as easily as other species.
-Hickory is a good fireplace wood, but its BTU greatness may be wasted on the average fireplace user and its flame isn't superb.
-Cottonwood is fine if you burn it at the right time, when it's dry and before it goes punky.
-Willow (weeping) is never good. For any purpose.
-Black locust seems to do pretty well if split small or if mixed with other hardwoods.
-Fruit woods burn well and with a decent flame if dried completely.
-Invasive species wood - buckthorn and ailanthus, for example - are bad alone, but will burn fine with a mix of other species. You could sneak some of this into an ambiance fireplace wood bundle and be fine.
-Elm is fine once it gets going, but it takes some skill to do and doesn't make great flames.
-I still haven't been able to source any beech, gum, or sycamore to test.
