Yew burl in absolute top quality!

05.03.2024

Even as an old hand in the timber trade with over 40 years of experience, I am always amazed and delighted at the incredible beauty that nature can produce in trees. One of these special beauties is certainly burl growth, the causes of which have still not been fully researched and for which, in my opinion, there is a whole range of causes and aggravating factors, just as there are many different forms of growth abnormalities that are often referred to in layman's terms as burl growth. For me, true burl growth is something that grows above ground on trees, forming new, very fine shoots with small leaves every year, usually in the form of a hemisphere or other round shape, which then die off again and whose remains, the small pointed so-called eyes, are overgrown again by new layers of growing wood. In this way, beautiful, dense and gapless sections of wood are created, the 'eyes' of which form the fine and very fine dot-shaped grains so sought-after in wood.
All these features are present in the thick slabs of wood that were revealed after sawing a yew burl and I must say that I am always amazed by so much beauty, fine grain, swirled and intertwined finest growth rings in this wood. The thick branch on the 5th photo gives an idea of how many annual rings this branch alone has; it has probably been growing for almost 100 years. Take a look at the pictures and I hope you can share my enthusiasm for this special precious wood!
The last photos show in detail the fine shoots under the thin bark of the yew and their appearance in the wood on the planed surfaces.