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Thread: Conkerberry & Currant Bush
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25th April 2019, 03:48 PM #1GOLD MEMBER
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Conkerberry & Currant Bush
From: Conkerberry collection
Conkerberry has been a life quest for me. …. The variations are numerous. It is slow growing with a huge variation in colours. My quest continues.White Ants love it and tend to hollow it out.
Peter.
Conkerberry (Carrissa lanceolata) grows to about 2m in thick groves in the tropical north of Australia, WA, NT and Qld. It offers small tasty black berries to humans and birds alike, while its spines offer protection for small birds and lizards sheltering in and under it. But as Peter says, it also offers protection to snakes and lizards as I found when cutting one in the Kimberley long ago. Most stems are less than about 80mm diiam. but occasionally some are bigger. Sadly most are hollow. It has a heartwood with various tones of orange from pale to dark and often with pronounced growth rings. Other colours can also be found .. grey-brown and greenish greys. It makes a nice contrast with the bone coloured sapwood.
I show some images below of a beautiful conkerberry pen by Gary H (see link above) foccussing principally on the wood.
Below these some sections from my conkerberry stockpile (some which may have been shown earlier)
PH Conk pen 1.jpg
PH Conk pen 2.jpg
Conk log.jpg
Conk log1.jpg
Conk.jpg
Colours are in fact MUCH brighter than shown above
It is sometimes confused with a related species Currant Bush Carrissa ovata which I will describe and illustrate shortly and separately
Euge
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25th April 2019, 04:07 PM #2GOLD MEMBER
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Currant Bush (Carrissa ovata)
Currant Bush, Carrissa ovata, can be easily confused with conkerberry. It grows further south than conkerberry does not grow as profusely or tall, stems in bushes reaching 1-1.5 m and generally with diameters of less than 60 mm. It is also armed with spines.
Although its also produces a small edible black fruit, and the corky bark on the stems looks very similar to its relative, when cut the wood displays little or no orange blaze in the heartwood. The wood is more a bone coloured ie pale beige-creamy-grey, sometimes streaked with darker shades of grey,, but otherwise fine, hard and dense like conkerberry.
I include a pic of a stem I cut a couple of decades ago in Qld about 65-70 mm in diam and also a small vase turned by a now deceased IWCS friend showing its wood features for turners. I have a bit I can spare.
Car ovata.jpg
Currant bush.jpg
Current bush 1.jpg
Current bush 2.jpg
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25th April 2019, 09:52 PM #3
Euge, Thankyou for this post. It has cleared up some confusion for me and three other pretty experienced woodies. We were offered access onto a property to "clear some conkerberry." Now I have a better understanding of why some of the "conkerberry" from around the Charters Towers area is white or bone colour as you say. Its "currant bush" Carrissia ovata and not "conkerberry C. lanceolata - still turns very nicely though. The two were growing on the same property with C. ovata being far more plentiful and explains our disappointment in not finding any colour in most cut stems.
Mobyturns
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25th April 2019, 10:27 PM #4GOLD MEMBER
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Thanks Mobyturns, it was discovery I made as well and thought it could be of interest.
Here are some stems of conkerberry I cut up for pen turners ... hoping the colours come up better than in the past, ...
but I see its little better than earlier images. Its really as bright as an Orange skin.
Euge
Conker pices.jpg
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25th April 2019, 10:47 PM #5
They have pretty good colour. I have plenty of C. lanceolata to suit my needs and apparently far more C. ovata . I have sourced mine from a few areas across the north. Colour is very vibrant off some of the red soil areas.
Mobyturns
In An Instant Your Life CanChange Forever
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27th April 2019, 10:23 PM #6
Both the above are Aussie natives.
Just to add more confusion is the African native Carissa spinarum that also grows in Qld and also known as Conkerberry and Current Bush. Sorry I don't know its timber colour.
Unfortunately all 3 look the same out bushNeil____________________________________________Every day presents an opportunity to learn something new
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