Petrified Wood by Many Other Names

A wide variety of names are commonly used for petrified wood. "Fossilized wood" is a general term for wood that has been petrified or preserved by other methods of fossilization. "Opalized wood" is petrified wood that has been replaced by opal, an amorphous form of silica. "Agatized wood" is wood that has been replaced by agate, a form of chalcedony or microcrystalline quartz. "Silicified wood" is wood that has been replace by any form of silica, including opal and agate.

Lapidary Uses of Petrified Wood

Petrified wood is often used in lapidary work. It is cut into shapes for making jewelry, sawn into blocks to make bookends, sawn into thick slabs to make table tops, and sawn into thin slabs for clock faces, cut into cabochons, used to make tumbled stones and many other crafts. Small pieces of petrified wood can be placed in a rock tumbler to make tumbled stones.

Only a small fraction of petrified wood is suitable for lapidary work. Poorly preserved specimens, those with lots of voids or closely-spaced fractures do not polish well or break while being worked. Specimens with no fractures or voids and with spectacular color are highly prized for lapidary work.

Collecting petrified wood can only be done on private property where permission has been obtained from the landowner or on limited tracts of government lands where small quantities are allowed to be collected for personal use. Before you collect get permission and collecting rules from the owner of private property or from the agency in charge of any government land where collecting will occur.

Not Really "Wood"
A material found in the Catahoula Formation of Louissiana, Mississippi and Texas is widely known as "petrified palm wood". However, palm plants really don't produce "wood". Instead their trunk is made-up of parenchyma, a fibrous support material that is surrounded by hollow tubes of the vascular structure known as xylem and phloem. These tubes transported water, nutrients, wastes and other materials through the plant.


Contributor: Hobart King