Unusual Flora Options

[Qld Sandy]

Yesterday we ran across an unusual Eucalyptus tree, like it has a cancer growing of it. One side is live while the other side is rings of dead wood. It makes me wonder what on earth happened to it. A mild lightning strike, if there is such a thing. Cheers.

[Lucky Eddie]

Indeed very unusual Sandy.

Certainly looks like fire or a lightening bolt was involved.



That said - I Always wondered where "wylie e coyote" ended up after that rocket ride!.
Maybe now we know!

Cheers

[Lucky Eddie]

But more truthfully speaking.........

In the world of trees - you do get a strange wart like growth phenomenon, called "Burl" wood.

As stated it is a diseased or deformed DNA type of wart like cell growth (cancerous even) that sends the growth of the timber into overdrive (it could be some kind of invasive fungus even), in growth terms of all different directions of grain growth often swirled etc.

They are highly sought after by wood workers for making unique coffee tables, or for spinning bowls on lathes etc.

Over this side of the pizza - we even had a team of a few guys who setup and were paying huge $ to people who would go bush with a ladder & chainsaw and remove them from growing trees. They guys stockpiled them in a sea container and them shipped them to Germany and England for resale over there at astronomical prices.

I once felled a big 450 year old dead Jarrah tree on my farm that had a single burl, weighing in at some 8 tonnes (about the size of a Volkswagon car).

I get a bucket wheel loader to put it on a (4 tonne) truck, and ever so slowly drove it to a mate who had a horizontal band saw mill, and he managed to take about 20 or more slabs about 50mm thick thru the burl one after another.

I put them into my seasoning kiln for 3 mo0nths and dried them out.

I made a few small coffee tables from the outer parts - and as they got bigger some almost dining table sized slabs went into just that - dining tables.

I guy came and saw what I had left (maybe half or about 4 tonnes worth) and bought the whole lot off me for an exorbitant price, loaded them up and took them away to his factory, to do much the same as I was doing with them (By then the novelty had worn off for me).

I read about 3 months later his whole timber factory caught fire and burnt to the ground - all the remaining burl slabs went up in the fire.



They often end up made into tables like this for example.

Strangely enough - for their rarity and beauty - they don't sell all that well and certainly don't command the sort of prices they are REALLY worth.
(Which is why I soon tired of bothering to make things out of them).

Over here -the scars on growing trees - where burl material has been sawn off with a chainsaw spoil a drive thru what might otherwise be pristine forest, eventually we had to pass laws to stop people cutting them off for export sale etc.

I recall we even had to dismiss one of our foresters who used to spend a LOT of his working time removing burl wood for sale to augment his foresters salary, turned out he was making more from the burl wood than we were paying him and he went full time professional burl wood gatherer...right out into the goldfields - anywhere he could find such strange growths. He would sell them to the guys exporting them by sea container full - and made some really good $ for a few years until the practice was outlawed.

Looking at that burl or what remains I would say someone removed the growth with a chainsaw - then as the timber left behind was dieing and drying out it caught fire maybe from a spark in a spinifex fire and burnt back to the green still growing wood underneath.

It's certainly interesting.

A great many small burl wood slabs are turned into wall clocks with the addition of 12 numbers glued on and a cheap clock mechanism inserted from the rear!



Some burl wood is lathe turned into lip over bowls etc and displays very well indeed.

It all depends on the piece of wood as to what you do with it.

I once saw a whole burl about 7 feet in diameter, completely hollowed out with a wood carving grinder attachment then sanded to a fine finish and clear sealed with 2 pack polurethane resin. It sat up on a set of feet that just happened to balance it beautifully, and the guy fitted all these spa bath attachments thru it from underneath.

It sold for over 10 grand in one of these fine wood galleries prevalent in our southwest region (albeit about 29 years ago now).



A single 14 inch dia burl lathe turned into a lip over bowl.











Despite all the timber work I did for 20 years - I don't miss it these days - I quit while I still had 10 fingers and thumbs!

Cheers

[Curley]

Good idea Eddie but I dont think you would get a burl that big from a tree that small.
Maybe some sort of insect has caused this to happen.....overgrown gall wasp perhaps?
Very interesting though.
Cheers
Curley

[Lucky Eddie]

It does seem unusual Curley - no doubt about that!

Insect damage is indeed a possibility.

Another that just occurred is Lignotubers.

Some Eucalypts, have the ability to regenerate after severe disturbance (fire / disease etc) by sending up new growth from nodules on the roots system called lignotubers. Lignotubers can also form under the bark - and where a eucalypt that's defoliated by fire - is threatened - it will send out new shoots from the stem and branches that allow it to recover and continue to grow.

Where a tree gets this "lignotuber response" from a disturbance event (fire, lightening strike, disease, broken branch, or insect attack, parrots attack?)
its possible that a wart like / cancerous like response might see the lignotuber response mutate into the type of growth we see on this unusual example.

Sure is an unusual example tho!

Cheers

[Nevol]

Maybe it's a canker? I found something mildly similar here:

http://www.treeworld.info/f9/canker-sycamore-788.html

[Lucky Eddie]

You might have it I reckon Nevol.

The fact the growth rings come out in a circular pattern annually from the center, looks just like the sycamore canker photo on that thread - all the burl wood growth i've seen looks more like a wart like excess growth in all different directions at the same time.

Another possibility that occurs to me is a parasitic tree growth - there are some kinds of symbiotic tree growth relationships where parasitic plants attach themselves to a healthy tree and take nutrients from it to grow themselves thus avoiding the need to grow a root system.

I'd go with the Canker answer tho - based on the similarity in looks.

Cheers