One of my favorite things about the Sweet Home petrified wood deposit is that there are as many amazing things to see under magnification as there are with the naked eye! The species diversity in this highly prized petrified wood deposit is unmatched by any other I’m aware of. It’s also a geographically distributed location that involves a lot of variations in both mineralogical preservation and site name which not only increases the species diversity but also the color patterns and mineral inclusions contained within the fossilized wood. This gorgeous, larger sized fossil petrified wood slab comes to us from an estate collection that was developed over the last three decades and represents a particularly high quality example of the types of petrified wood in circulation for collectors before I had even begun my rockshop! This gorgeous slab comes from a finely preserved hardwood that most closely resembles modern sycamore. The fine medullary rays are easily visible to the naked eye and help make this one of the more easily recognized (and highly prized) petrified wood species. Under magnification, the consistency of the ray thickness combined with the thickening at each annual ring boundary of those rays helps distinguish sycamore from beech, but the two are very similar and this could be some intermediary cousin in the fossil record. Like all of the best Sweet Home petrified wood it is preserved well enough that you can see the tiny structural details of the original fossil tree in most regions of the cut and polished face! This slab came from the Calapooia River drainagee which is well known for producing particularly finely preserved, high quality petrified wood specimens. The growth structure in the entire piece is exquisitely clear and shows the detailed growth structure throughout! There are some beautiful crystal geode cavities that formed in desiccation splits that almost certainly formed in the tree trunk before it petrified. We’ve re-ground and re-polished this piece so that the finish meets our standards, and now this is one gorgeous, highly collectible petrified wood round! A beautiful piece that can help round out a serious collection with an example specimen that is hard to come by in this quality. This is a nice, perfect petrified hardwood round from a large and scattered petrified forest near Sweet Home, Oregon. There are numerous locations (most on private land) of absolutely outstanding petrified wood in the hills and valleys of the Cascade Foothills. The wood that is found there varies a great deal in quality and preservation (even within the same dig site) but is often very agatized and extremely well preserved showing the finest level of plant detail under magnification. Paleobotanists have published over 60 species of wood descriptions from this area, but my own reference books are too limited to narrow them past some of their modern relatives. In this case, the wood grain is preserved well enough to see the pores and rays in plenty of detail to afford a good identification. Like other specimens from the Pacific Northwest, it’s one of the most sought after petrified wood varieties in the world!! The colors found in the wood in this region are mostly black, cream and earth tones, but a few striking pieces with this rich tan/gray/black high contrast color spectrum are found. It’s a wonderful show piece that will really look great in any collection! This complete, nicely shaped round was cut from the center of a very well preserved petrified tree trunk. This is a beautifully shaped, richly colored, almost completely fracture free specimen with an immaculate finish. The tree rings are tight and well defined, and preserved in a dark black & tan colored agate that really took a nice polish. The dark agate interior contrasts nicely with the rest of the slab. It has been cut with a diamond saw then sanded and polished to a mirror finish. Our polish work is one of the things that sets our petrified wood and other fine lapidary materials apart from our imitators and we’ve made sure this estate piece lives up to our expectations. We never compromise with any stone, deploying every trick known in the industry (and some that aren’t) to coax the best possible luster from every stone! With any luck you’ll win this one and get to see the difference for yourself. This is a nearly perfect slab cut from the center of the log. It measures about 14″ x 12 1/2″ across the mirror polished face and is cut about 3/4 thick. Weight is 8.38 lbs. A nice, unique natural wonder collectible exclusively from Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary.