This gorgeous and finely detailed slab is one of the nicest midsize Washington State Saddle Mountain petrified wood rounds I've ever cut! It's a remarkably beautiful and incredibly well preserved specimen with fantastic, tight growth rings and finely detailed wood structure under magnification in pleasing, subtle, warm colors. Looking closely at this specimen under magnification you discover it is actually two fossils in a single stone! The main round is easily spotted as countless tight growth rings from what was likely a limb from a huge conifer tree. Below it is a darker zone of fossilized organic matter in richly colored agate. This area is a layer of densely packed organic structure that I'm at a loss to identify. I may be a very tight matt of roots from plants growing nearby or it could be a thick layer of bark from a larger trunk sandwiched between these pieces with a few invading roots. It's fascinating to study and will take a lot more of it to fully explain what is easily visible with a hand loup. The opal content is so high in the preserved wood that it polishes like porcelain or glass - it's really something that needs to be seen in person to be fully appreciated. It was a very slow growing conifer tree (or possibly massive limb) with very tight growth rings and a resin canal free honeycomb pattern parenchyma preserved in very nice detail under extreme magnification! It's hard to be certain in a cross section only view whether you are looking at a cypress, redwood (sequoia), or cedar - all were found in this fossil conifer forest and the distinction is subtle (and perhaps sometimes even imagined). But the polish in this gemmy specimen says gemstone and collector piece as much as it does fossil!! It's a truly mirror perfect finish that is almost hypnotizing in hand! NOTE: The second photo is taken from a mate cut slab off of the same log. It is included to show edge detail and finish quality which are virtually identical in this slab but difficult to capture in a photo. This is a really gemmy mid-sized round cut from the center of a nice, medium sized petrified log that came from our neighboring state, Washington. Washington has a few nice petrified wood deposits, the most well known of which is Saddle Mountain. The Saddle Mountain wood is sort of a cross between what you'll find on the McDonald Ranch and McDermitt here in Oregon. Many of the specimens recovered there have a really high opal content like the McDonald Ranch wood does. The opal content makes it a bit more challenging to get a good polish on, but this piece really shined up beautifully. The rings are really well preserved in this one and I think it's a fir tree given the absence of either resin canals or hardwood pores. With a hand lens you can make out the conifer cell structure pretty easily, but it's hard for me to discern fir from cedar or bald cypress and this location has produced all three. It's particularly nice agate and the polish shows off the natural gemmy beauty very nicely! Like all of the petrified wood we specialize in here at Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary, this piece has been cut and lapped to be perfectly flat, then sanded and polished to the highest quality finish you'll find anywhere. Our polish work is among the best to be found anywhere and we go out of our way to make sure every piece has the same mirror perfect shine we'd want if it were going to stay in our collection! This is a virtually perfect slab cut from the center of a complete log section. It measures about 6 3/4" x 4 1/2" across the polished face and is cut at a slight taper that goes from about 0.39" to 0.57" thick. It weighs 0.90 lbs. Display stands sold separately. A nice, unique naturally wonderful stone collectible exclusively from Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary.
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