On 4/15/2010 9:55 AM, tom koehler wrote:
Just got home from a trip out west. Me and SWMBO travel with a home made
teardrop trailer and this time we went to the western deserts in California
to see some of the spring bloom. Got some swell pics, and when I saw the
Joshua Trees, I had an idea... what about wood from these trees? Maybe they
aren't properly a tree, but by golly, the trunk looks like wood and feels
like wood. The information plaque says there aee no growth rings. The cross
section of a trunk looks like a single homogeneous woody mass, and feels
quite solid and woodlike. I really wanted to cut a chunk off one of the
downed dead and very dry trunks I saw there, but it is Federal land and a
National Park. Taking a chunk of that wood would have been a Very Bad Thing.
My query, then, is, is it wood, or not? The followup question naturally would
be, has anyone worked with this stuff? Is there a reasonable and legal source
of this maybe wood? I know I could probably google these questions, but
thought I'd get better quality answers straight from the well.

tom koehler

Wait a minute! How do they know Josuha trees are thousands of years old
if they don't have rings?