OK, what is this?

[Odie]

This is Yellow Box Burl. The almost white growth is on one side, and goes completely through from one side to the other. What is that?

I'm tempted to say it's some kind of fungus, but there is a faint grain pattern within the white area that matches the surrounding wood......so, it appears to be some kind of discoloration of the wood itself. Very unusual......don't recall of ever seeing anything like this before.....

-----odie-----

 

[Glenn Lefley]

I think it’s beautiful I always look for wood with differen5 coloration. But I don’t know what it is. Is it just as dense as the darker wood?

 

[Odie]

I think it’s beautiful I always look for wood with differen5 coloration. But I don’t know what it is. Is it just as dense as the darker wood?

Yeah, Glen......it seems to be as dense as the surrounding wood. I worked on this bowl all day yesterday, and it's done now.....except for the foot. It's still attached to the waste block. I'll try and get another photo of it later today, or tomorrow. It does have a very contrasting color difference, and I'm with you on that......looks great!

-----odie-----

 

[robo hippy]

Just glancing at it, I would have guessed it was some sort of rot caused by fungus or some thing similar. If it is almost as hard as the rest of the wood, I would have to say it is a strange coloration in the wood...

robo hippy

 

[Donovan Bailey]

Odie: Nature provides a way for wood to have a defensive reaction to a foreign "invader." It could be that years ago the tree was subjected to something like a fungi or an insect and it reacted to it by developing a defensive layer around the wounded cells...and the defensive cell layer ends up looking different than the surrounding wood. It is possible that this is what you are dealing with here. In my area, I see this defensive evidence sometimes when I run across a tree with an old square nail that was hammered in the tree about a hundred years ago where the tree then sometimes encased it as a defense response. I also think that this is how a burl (cells that are different wood density, grain orientation, color, etc.) gets developed on a tree...it is simply reacting to some invasive stress. Anyhow, this is my best guess.

 

[Odie]

OK.....here is the finished bowl, except for the foot. It's now curing the finish coat of Danish Oil Natural. It very well may be what @Donovan Bailey suggests, and some sort of protective measures taken by the tree against a foreign object/material. I didn't see any nails, or other foreign things in it.....doesn't mean there isn't anything there, though......

Any other suggestions?

-----odie-----

 

[Don Wattenhofer]

Even burls have sap wood!

 

[Lamar Wright]

OK.....here is the finished bowl, except for the foot. It's now curing the finish coat of Danish Oil Natural. It very well may be what @Donovan Bailey suggests, and some sort of protective measures taken by the tree against a foreign object/material. I didn't see any nails, or other foreign things in it.....doesn't mean there isn't anything there, though......

Any other suggestions?

-----odie-----
View attachment 34158View attachment 34159

Hi Odie, don't know what it is either but that is one beautiful bowl indeed!

 

[Odie]

Hi Odie, don't know what it is either but that is one beautiful bowl indeed!

Thanks, Lamar......my good friend!

Even burls have sap wood!

I thought of that, Don.....and rejected the idea......but, who knows for sure? You could be right.

-----odie-----

 

[Greg Norman]

This is Yellow Box Burl. The almost white growth is on one side, and goes completely through from one side to the other. What is that?

I'm tempted to say it's some kind of fungus, but there is a faint grain pattern within the white area that matches the surrounding wood......so, it appears to be some kind of discoloration of the wood itself. Very unusual......don't recall of ever seeing anything like this before.....

-----odie-----
View attachment 34153

Since that’s a eucalyptus it’s most likely Armillaria luteobubalina or the honey mushroom, a parasitic white rot fungus. The vast majority of eucalyptus trees that die are killed by it. Yellow Box is hard enough to show bleaching without any softening of the wood in the early stages of infection.

 

[Odie]

Since that’s a eucalyptus it’s most likely Armillaria luteobubalina or the honey mushroom, a parasitic white rot fungus. The vast majority of eucalyptus trees that die are killed by it. Yellow Box is hard enough to show bleaching without any softening of the wood in the early stages of infection.

Thanks, Greg.......

If the Armillaria luteobubalina is something that penetrates the wood at a microscopic level, then I'd say that is the most likely answer so far.
This image:

This image appears to show what I was suggesting in post #1, about how the white area displays some grain pattern that seems to match the surrounding grain of the unaffected wood.

Unless we have some additional comments/input, I think we may have the answer to the question at hand.

-----odie-----