How to Identify Fossil (Petrified) Wood - Page 5 of 5
By Ed Strauss, Washington (photos and content)

Now lets look at a couple of oddballs:

Figure 7

Figure 8

The first specimen (figure 7) is a conifer, right? Nope, it is ginkgo which is neither a conifer or a hardwood. It evolved before the cone bearing and flower bearing trees and is in a group all by itself. Notice how the tracheids are not uniform but look like an ear of corn. This micro photograph of gingko is 100x magnification. At 10x we could easily think that it is a soft wood. That is why higher magnification is often necessary. The second specimen (figure 8) does have uniform tracheids, but look at those wide rays. The wide rays tell us that this is a fairly unique tree, it is a vesseless hardwood.

Now we have a pretty good idea what the difference between an angiosperm, flower bearing tree and a gymnosperm, cone bearing tree is in terms of cell structure anatomy. After getting used to using a hand lens and examining many specimens we can become experienced in separating the conifers from the flower bearing trees ("hardwoods").

(Text copyright© 2001 by Ed Strauss. Petrified Wood From Western Washington All rights reserved.)

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