Ooline Cutting Board

[dai sensei]

Recently I went on a trip up to a private property in Acadia Valley Qld with a number of International Wood Collectors Society members. I obtained some Ooline (Cadellia pentastylis) timber (amongst others) that is an ancient remnant rainforest tree from the past.

We could only obtain fallen dead trees that were mainly hollow but I also took a slice of a solid old tree root to make a cutting board for the property owner and count growth rings. Being just a root it does not represent the entire age of the tree, but the tree will be older than this.

Turned flaton bothsides on a lathe and then sanded to 600 grit I photographed it at high resolution then proceeded to count rings 10mm at a time over the approximate 145mm radius. Hard to see in places with up to 89 dark rings per 10mm but I determined that root was 1089 years old!

rings small.jpg

Here's a photo with a thinners wipe. I will now soak the cutting board in refined mineral oil before drying and buffing to a nice sheen. Unfortunately the nice red colour will not last as it gets dark with time

cutting board thinners only.jpg

[brainstrust]

well that is interesting and old! Don't know if you are counting the growth rings correctly or not but wow!!!! that is an old tree, what a life!

[Robson Valley]

What are the environmental factors which promote the appearance of an early wood/late wood 'growth ring'?
In more temperate climates, it's usually a summer/winter stimulus. Where this was found, might it be wet/dry seasons?
We get instances of false rings here, particularly if we are hard hit with an odd dry spell and then it wets up again.
Even the mechanical soil damage from an earthquake will leave a ring mark.

Southern British Columbia has just experienced the driest spring time ever on record.
Might be enough to leave an anatomical mark as a thin ring if there's good precipitation in August/September.

As for your proposed age for the root, I'm not too surprised. Seems probable under some harsh conditions at best.

[Fumbler]

That's be quite spectacular, and shame about the colour fade. Nice job.

[Mobyturns]

The age of many western / arid zone trees is an interesting point.

I've seen a whitewood (Atalaya hemiglauca) of around 100mm dia that was blazed as a survey corner reference tree near Kynuna in the late 1890's and connected to by me in the late 1980's. It is unusual for the original surveyor to "take" such a small diameter reference tree in the first instance but for the reference to still be almost as clear as the day it was cut almost 100 years later is quite impressive given the harsh environmental conditions. Just how old are many of these trees???

[dai sensei]

Am I counting the rings properly, yeh good question, especially with my eyesight

Definitely winter/summer at this location, it is no longer rain forest, closer to desert. The rings do get closer indicating dry years and further apart in I assume wet years. They are definitely closer together nearer the surface as this area dried out. This tree has been dead for probably over 50 years so hard to establish point of reference too. The capillaries in and around the rings running in all directions certainly make it hard to read too. Ooline is known for its weird grain, more obvious just below the bark, running in up to 3 directions. It seems to run up/down as usual, plus at 45 degrees and then 90 to that too, so not sure how it actually grows.

This root was just ~200-300 dia but the dead tree was ~500mm dia, so the tree was probably ~1500-2000 years old. There are also very old dead trees on the property still standing much larger than that. I'd love to drop a solid one to take a slice to give to the experts to establish a better establishment of age - next visit maybe, there are hundreds of dead Ooline trees on this property (it's really creepy at night seeing all these effective skeletons on the horizon). On speaking to some of the tree experts in the IWCS, they put Ooline in the same category as Huon Pine, i.e. first trees after the ferns etc of the first trees on earth. Not sure how factual this is or just opinions but the rings in this root certainly give the theory some credence.

[Robson Valley]

If you've not had bush fires in the region, ages in centuries will be commonplace. Interesting to see such slabs marked with significant ancient events.
Here the fire cycle is 70-100 years except a strange patch of fire free forest which has a stand of western red cedar (Thuja plicata) of some 2,000 - 4,000 years in age.

For aging modern conifers, we use an "increment borer" (Stihl? Sandvik?) which cores a rod of wood a bit smaller than a pencil.
Given the nature of your trees in general, you would break your arm, trying to crank such a borer into a log, no matter how sharp the cutter was.

What has worked for me was to nail a guide stick to the log then plow a 3/4" wide router track along a radius.
Then wet the track with cooking oil.

If you visited your local secondary school, I'm sure that they would let you sit down with a stereo dissecting microscope
and count magnified rings to confirm your estimate.

[dai sensei]

If you've not had bush fires in the region, ages in centuries will be commonplace. ....

These trees don't burn only char. Instead of rocks the local farmer lines her outdoor fire pit with Ooline logs. I guess with a lot of diesel/petrol, plus well stacked with other timbers it might go, but generally even hot bushfires don't burn them