Kt,

That's something I've never thought of!

By education I've got biology and geology under my belt . . . by way of hobby, bamboo . . . but I'll be darned if I ever thought of fossil/petrified bamboo.

Sounds like we've got a mission on our hands!!!

Dave

I've collected petrified wood since I can remember, and have now and then thought about petrified bamboo after seeing some wood that vaguely resembled bamboo.

North of here there are whole trees found petrified, but you have to dig to get to most of them, but no bamboo.

Supposedly there is/was some in China near Yen-chou, although no bamboo has ever been known to grow there, past nor present. This is the only place I have ever heard of it's existence.

Kt

I wonder if its being hollow has anything to do with it. Most bamboo would probably decompose much quicker than a solid tree. It would be interesting to see if the petrified bamboo had solid culms. Just a wild guess.

I found some petrafied bamboo, here ya go. enjoy

Here is a link that might be useful: petrafied bamboo-shanghai star

100 million years ago...WOW!!!! I wonder how many times that species has gone to seed since then.

Thanks Jayonaise.

Kt

There is a petrified panda bear posted in the gallery...

My guess is it flowered a million times since then and is now growing somewhere in your yard.

K'fer, nice bear. Looks too friendly to be much trouble.

Kentuck:

About 20 years ago I found petrified bamboo in broken sandstone used as new road material. It was 3-4"dia. in short pieces filled with sandstone. Most has been misplaced since I found it but still have several small fragments left.

Cbabo, that is great! Do you know the origin of the petrified boo/sandstone??

If possible, could you post a picture of some??

Thanks

Kt

I was at a rock shop where they had a huge slice of petrified palm trunk. It looked just like this palm trunk we cut down in Jamaica after it died from Lethal Yellowing:

{{gwi:425410}}

I think the petrified bamboo I found was in the Huntsvikke area but don't remember for sure. I hunted petrified wood over a wide area of east Texas. Found several good pieces of palm. At the time I thought the boo was giant reed of some kind, didn't even think of bamboo.
Cut and polished some cabs of it: very interesting and pretty.

Petrified palm wood can be worth a lot. I have several small pieces. It is recognized by it's speckled appearance like the stump in Unautre's photo.

South of Huntsville, in Wellborn, just outside of Bryan/College Station, there is petrified wood everywhere. If the topsoil ever erodes away, it will be another petrified forest like in Arizona.

I worked in the oilfield back in the early 80's and found all kinds of petrified wood. Years later I moved to College Station and retieved thousands of pieces of it, and left much behind when I moved away.

I still know where several pieces lie hidden in the woods. I know of one piece that looked like roots and a stump. Five of us with shovels and prybars could not budge it. I sure would love to have that huge piece sitting in my front yard!!

The largest that I was able to take home from the workplace was some pieces about 40 pounds. In some, you can see the yearly growth rings.

To this day, everytime I go there, I look for petrified wood, although houses are popping up everywhere and dirt roads back then, are now four lane paved streets, forever burying the petified wood.

Kt

Hey kentuck_8b, do you remember a few specific directions to the woods that has all the petrified wood? I live near College Station and would love to go hunt for some. Thanks.....

Markusa, first let me say that the roads have changed so much and apparently many people know of the petrified wood since it has become very hard to find some.

It has been a while since I drove down Wellborn road/highway, but for starters, take the road directly across from the Wellborn store. It crosses the railroad tracks, and if you stay on it, it will dead end at the river. There are a couple of roads to the left, that will eventually come back out on Wellborn road. These roads used to be dirt/gravel and you could find petrified wood everywhere. There was even one area that was good for hunting black petrified wood.

About halfway to the river, on the first road and on the right, was a home owned by Mr. Parsons, next to the Smith oilwell where we worked. Mr. Parsons, a very interesting man, and along with an extensive arrowhead collection which were all found in the general area, had several petrified trees/logs up to 30 feet long that ran into a hillside. They probably ran further, but that was as far as he dug.

On the other side of Wellborn road, is Barron Road which also had a lot of petrified wood along it but now it is a four lane paved road running through a neighbourhood. Directly across HWY 6 from Barron Road, was a new housing development area. When they would clear trees for new houses, we would go through the area and find all kinds of mostly small pieces of petrified wood.

Any road in that general area is good to search on, especially if it is gravel/dirt, and if it has recently been graded.

Headed back into CS from Wellborn, take a left on 2818. It immediately crosses the tracks. Take the first left, by a trailer park, and follow that road. There were a few roads off to the left that were still gravel where I found some very long pieces of petrified wood. There are many many roads back off in that area, easy to get lost on, but some may still have some petrified wood on them.

Any creek in the area is well worth searching since that is most likely where you will find some petrified wood, but most creeks are on private property.

I will be making a trip to CS within the next couple of weeks or so, and will try to make a trip to the area and get some road names for you, and maybe find some wood for myself. If you like, you can email me directly if you need more info.

Good Luck

P.S. Any word on how the football team is going to do this year?

Kt

Thanks for the directions. I'm familiar with that area but I wasn't looking for petrified wood before. If I find any petrified bamboo I'll yell.

I haven't kept up with the football team. I'll route for them but you never know with the Aggies which team will show up.

Kentuck' where in Texas are you; I am in Houston. I only have a few small pieces of pet. boo here but I think I know where the others are. I will look for it in cooler weather and less mosquitos. If I find it I will send you some. Do you cut and polish stones?

This is the first I've ever heard of it or thought of it. Congrats on being the 1st to ever post about it. As far as I know anyway.

Readers of this forum will be interested to learn that the 11th century Chinese thinker, Shen Kua (also Gua), describes in detail a swath of petrified bamboo uncovered in Yen-chou (Yenchow, Yanzhou, etc.) in northwestern China, a region where bamboo did not grow at all. A landslide occured along the bank of a river in the region, uncovering the underground fossilized remains of the bamboo. Shen, amazingly, speculated that in distant antiquity, the region may have been lower and moister, and therefore more suitable for bamboo. For an excellent English translation and discussion, see Vol. III of Joseph Needham, SCIENCE AND CIVILISATION IN CHINA (Cambridge U. Press, 1970), p. 214.

Jonathan Chaves
Professor of Chinese Literature
The George Washington University
Washington, DC USA

jchaves-
I've always been interested in the work Needham produced, but the Science and Civilisation series -- as wonderful as it is -- is too pricey for my home library, so I appreciate the reference I would have otherwise missed. I just finished Simon Winchester's book about Needham, "The Man Who Loved China," and it was a fascinating read. It's amazing the number of things the Chinese invented, discovered, and theorized about long before the West did.

Could this be a picture of petrified bamboo? Please notice the 1.5 inches between the nodes. I can provide another pic if it will help in the identity. Thanks much, Harold

It doesn't look petrified to me. Where did you get it?

The south end of the Big Island. It is definitely crystallized; look closely at the broken area next to the 1 inch mark; notice the structure of the nodes also. Thanks much!

It's very interesting, but it still doesn't look like petrified bamboo to me. Here is why I think that:

1. The rounded nodal joints don't have the structure that bamboo does (take a look at some closeup photos of bamboo nodes and you'll see)

2. The node spacing in relation to the length and diameter of the object differs greatly from that of most any bamboo I've seen

3. The totally uniform color and glossiness are unlikely for a petrified object

4. You mention mineralization, but I don't see any evidence of the mineralization I would expect with something petrified.

It looks very new, and my best guess is that it's a bone or resin carving that is the artist's interpretation of a piece of bamboo.

I'm curious what the ends look like and how weighty it feels.

Look at a website "indoagate.com" to see photos and maps of where it is prevalent.

Sorry so late to the party... we moved to AL 4 years ago. Who knew the backyard was overgrown w boo. And yes, petrified stumps. We've been wrkng 2? years now trying to get rid of it. We tried to find folks 2 take it off r hands but no luck. That's how I saw these posts, was searching on best tool to hollow out petrified boo stumps! Lol. If any interest lets try to talk offline. Best to all :)

Faith-

Petrification takes millions of years. You may have some hard, old stumps, but I doubt they are petrified in the scientific sense of the word.

There is many I have some

I have several but now I can only find one