This truly perfect slab is cut from the center of one of the most visually captivating and best preserved of the petrified palm logs we imported recently from Myanmar. In the past we've offered palm specimens from Texas, Louisiana, Indonesia and Wyoming, but this is the best batch of petrified palm logs we've ever had the pleasure of cutting! We have several choice petrified tropical hardwoods available from this forest, but this slab is taken from the first of the palm logs we've had the absolute pleasure of cutting and WOW! It is very nicely preserved! The vascular bundles are ringed with colorful agate making a truly breathtaking naturally speckled display in this 100% natural petrified fossil wood. Under magnification these vascular bundles are fascinating and not quite like other palms I've seen from Asia, though the species is beyond my qualifications to even attempt to name if it has, in fact, been identified at all! The color contrast in the gemstone that preserved this fossil really makes the structure of the trunk stand out in incredible detail - one of my favorite palm slabs I have ever done. And of course you know that we've polished this amazing natural treasure to a truly mirror perfect finish as well! As unusual as it is colorful, this slab is really a choice petrified palm! The cut on the back intersected some fracture lines in the log that left some flakes missing on the edges (nothing that is visible on the display face however and it does not affect display options for the slab).
A couple of years ago on a trip to Asia I made a chance discovery that has started a nearly year long odyssey to track down a new source for petrified wood. I met a fellow with a family connection in Myanmar. I had heard rumors for years about petrified logs in Burma, but the only ones I had ever seen were in a market in Shanghai. Those logs were prohibitively expensive, but absolutely fascinating and, best of all, highly agatized. One of the most difficult things to assess with a potential new source for logs is whether the material is agatized enough to produce good specimens. But I was a bit more optimistic in this case as I had high hopes that the nicely silicified logs I'd seen in China were in fact Burmese logs. Since then I've made two trips to Myanmar to examine the material and meet the people digging it. Most of what they dig is still exported to China as viewing stones, some of them towering much higher than me! These are typically not cut, but polished on one vertical face to follow the contours of the log which are then sold as tree jade (though the material is opal and agate and not jade at all). I visited the villages where these stones were being dug and worked by the local craftsmen. Aside from being thatched huts with open sides, these compounds look a lot like my place with rock piled up everywhere! But among the overgrown piles of stone (filled with giant blue scorpions no less!) were some choice full logs of what appeared to be very well preserved petrified wood. I eventually managed to secure two smaller logs that I could fly back with in my luggage to cut and polish and prove out the stone I was seeing. As exciting as it always is for me to work with a new source of petrified wood, I was very pleasantly surprised to find fine structure and very polishable specimens in these two logs, though each was preserved very differently and clearly from different sites.
While these adventures provide a certain degree of color in my own life, I ultimately do it for my own passion for these amazing stones and the ancient stories they tell. I have not been able to date any of these logs yet (but I will continue to work on it and share that info when I have it). It is my sincere hope that a rare and uncommon specimen for your own collection as the fruits of these early endeavors to find a new source will be something you can enjoy as well. Trust me, it sounds like a lot more fun than it is as it has taken my body a couple of solid weeks to recover from each trip to a country that has only recently begun to open itself up through a series of highly published political and economic changes that they are still struggling with.
This nice specimen represents a complete, full round cut from the center of a good sized petrified palm trunk. The petrified wood from Myanmar is quite different from those I find here in the Pacific Northwest and as my own interests gravitate towards variety in species as much as locations you can imagine how exciting it is to be able to expand my collection in new dimensions! I hope you'll take this chance to do the same and obtain one of these nice collector sized slabs for your own collection! It takes a fantastic polish which really brings out every detail in the finely patterned cell structure which is easily visible to the naked eye. Palmoxolon (petrified palm) is readily identifiable from the unique spotted wood grain that looks like a bundle of spaghetti cut in cross section. This would make a wonderful start or addition to any petrified wood collection!
This round is complete, was sliced from the center of a log, and has some nice natural wood tone colors in the rind. The polish is world class - just what you've come to expect when you buy from Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary! Don't pay too much for too little - only our shop can deliver the best polish you'll ever see on truly museum grade petrified wood and agates on every piece we sell!
This piece measures about 12 1/8" x 8" across the polished face and is cut about 0.54" thick. Weight is about 3.86 lbs. Stands sold separately.
A nice, unique natural wonder collectible exclusively from Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary!
A couple of years ago on a trip to Asia I made a chance discovery that has started a nearly year long odyssey to track down a new source for petrified wood. I met a fellow with a family connection in Myanmar. I had heard rumors for years about petrified logs in Burma, but the only ones I had ever seen were in a market in Shanghai. Those logs were prohibitively expensive, but absolutely fascinating and, best of all, highly agatized. One of the most difficult things to assess with a potential new source for logs is whether the material is agatized enough to produce good specimens. But I was a bit more optimistic in this case as I had high hopes that the nicely silicified logs I'd seen in China were in fact Burmese logs. Since then I've made two trips to Myanmar to examine the material and meet the people digging it. Most of what they dig is still exported to China as viewing stones, some of them towering much higher than me! These are typically not cut, but polished on one vertical face to follow the contours of the log which are then sold as tree jade (though the material is opal and agate and not jade at all). I visited the villages where these stones were being dug and worked by the local craftsmen. Aside from being thatched huts with open sides, these compounds look a lot like my place with rock piled up everywhere! But among the overgrown piles of stone (filled with giant blue scorpions no less!) were some choice full logs of what appeared to be very well preserved petrified wood. I eventually managed to secure two smaller logs that I could fly back with in my luggage to cut and polish and prove out the stone I was seeing. As exciting as it always is for me to work with a new source of petrified wood, I was very pleasantly surprised to find fine structure and very polishable specimens in these two logs, though each was preserved very differently and clearly from different sites.
While these adventures provide a certain degree of color in my own life, I ultimately do it for my own passion for these amazing stones and the ancient stories they tell. I have not been able to date any of these logs yet (but I will continue to work on it and share that info when I have it). It is my sincere hope that a rare and uncommon specimen for your own collection as the fruits of these early endeavors to find a new source will be something you can enjoy as well. Trust me, it sounds like a lot more fun than it is as it has taken my body a couple of solid weeks to recover from each trip to a country that has only recently begun to open itself up through a series of highly published political and economic changes that they are still struggling with.
This nice specimen represents a complete, full round cut from the center of a good sized petrified palm trunk. The petrified wood from Myanmar is quite different from those I find here in the Pacific Northwest and as my own interests gravitate towards variety in species as much as locations you can imagine how exciting it is to be able to expand my collection in new dimensions! I hope you'll take this chance to do the same and obtain one of these nice collector sized slabs for your own collection! It takes a fantastic polish which really brings out every detail in the finely patterned cell structure which is easily visible to the naked eye. Palmoxolon (petrified palm) is readily identifiable from the unique spotted wood grain that looks like a bundle of spaghetti cut in cross section. This would make a wonderful start or addition to any petrified wood collection!
This round is complete, was sliced from the center of a log, and has some nice natural wood tone colors in the rind. The polish is world class - just what you've come to expect when you buy from Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary! Don't pay too much for too little - only our shop can deliver the best polish you'll ever see on truly museum grade petrified wood and agates on every piece we sell!
This piece measures about 12 1/8" x 8" across the polished face and is cut about 0.54" thick. Weight is about 3.86 lbs. Stands sold separately.
A nice, unique natural wonder collectible exclusively from Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary!