petrified wood and cones

Sweet Home

Grassey Mountain

Eden Valley

Yakima Canyon

Why collecting petrified wood?

For my thesis I was looking for something special and that's how I felt in love with petrified wood. So I asked several people for some information's about petrified maple wood. Looking for such a piece I met Mr. Ulrich Dernbach from Heppenheim (a very well known German petrified wood dealer). After a short telephone call with Mr. Dernbach I got the chance to take a picture of a maple round. During taking the photo and looking through Mr. Dernbach`s  collection it happened to me. From this moment I felt in love with the world of petrified wood. Now I'm collecting wood and my collection is still growing.

Thanks to Mr. Dernbach for infecting me with the petrified wood virus!

How does the wood petrify?
The wood must first be covered with such agents as volcanic ash, volcanic mud flows, sediments in lakes and swamps or material washed in by violent floods. By any means which would exclude oxygen (anaerobic, no air and no bacteria) and thus prevent decay.  A several number of mineral substances (such as Calcite, Pyrite, Marcasite) can cause petrifaction. By far the most common is silica.  Solutions of silica dissolved in ground water infiltrate the buried wood and through a complex chemical process are precipitated and left in the individual plant cells.  Here the silica may take a variety of forms: it may be agate, jasper, chalcedony or opal.  The wood molecules (lignum and cellulose) become inseparably bonded to the silica molecules and it changes almost of the wood's characteristics. The characteristic that it does not necessarily change its cell structure! The varied colours of petrified wood are caused by the presence of other minerals that enter the wood in solution with the silica. 
Red and pink are produced by the presence of hematite, a form of oxidized iron. Yellow, brown and orange are produced by the presence of goethite. Purple and blue are produced by manganese dioxide, white is produced by pure silica and the colour black is produced by organic carbon or pyrite. In permineralisation, the wood's cell structure is better preserved, giving it the looking of real wood. But not all petrified wood is permineralized. Permineralization transpires when wood is preserved with calcite rather than silica.
All of these different processes and conditions explain why there are so many different looking types of petrified wood. It changes even from one locality. It is because of the individual environments they are formed in have subtle to major differences in amounts of many factors (available silica, temperature, mineral compositions etc.). But this all makes collecting petrified wood so fascinating.