222g Western Australian “Peanut Wood” Sphere 2A

222g “Peanut Wood Sphere from Western Australia with a diameter of approximately 5.5cm.

You will receive this exact piece, the group shot is for comparison purposes only, each piece is listed separately.

Peanut Wood is a variety of Petrified Wood that is usually dark brown to black in color. It is recognized by its white-to-cream-color markings that are ovoid in shape and about the size of a peanut. It received its name from these peanut-size markings. This rare and prized Western Australian Petrified Wood has a very unusual history indeed.

Peanut Wood began its life as a conifer tree on land in the area now known as Western Australia. When these trees died, rivers carried them into a shallow, salty epicontinental sea that covered much of what is now the Australian continent.

This was during the Cretaceous time period, when a species of marine clam - Teredo Navilis or Shipworm that loved to eat wood lived in the Australian sea. The clam larvae were able to smell nearby wood and swim to it. When they arrived at a piece of driftwood, they would attach themselves to it and start eating. A tiny pair of valves soon developed on one end of their long body, and they used the sharp edges of their shell as a rasp. They shaved off tiny particles of wood - which they would promptly eat. In a few weeks they could excavate a deep tunnel into the soft, mushy wood.

A few species of these wood-eating clams live in the oceans today. Sailors have cursed about them for hundreds of years as the enemy of wooden ships. Sailors began calling them "shipworms" because of their long bodies and their ability to tunnel into a ship much like a worm tunnels through an apple. In the 1700s, shipbuilders began lining the hulls of their ships with thin sheets of copper to protect them from the shipworm. Shipworms have been ruining ships, pilings, docks, retaining walls, and other wooden structures for as long as people have been placing them in salt water.

Back to the Cretaceous seafloor, where the waterlogged wood that has been heavily drilled by prehistoric shipworms is resting. Billions of tiny radiolarians (tiny plankton with siliceous shells) are living in the water above the wood. A river mouth is a great place for radiolarians to live because the river delivers a continuous supply of nutrients to the sea. When the radiolarians die, their tiny siliceous shells sink to the bottom and accumulate as a white sediment known as radiolarian ooze.

Layer after layer of radiolarian ooze accumulated over the wood, entered the bore holes, and some of it dissolved to form a super-saturated silica solution. This dissolved silica precipitated in the cavities of the wood and replaced the woody tissues, converting the waterlogged wood into a fossil.

Such a wonderful and complex web of conditions coming together by Mother Nature to form this amazing and unique type of Petrified Wood.

Petrified Wood comes from the Greek root petro, which means rock or stone, with literal meaning ‘wood turned into stone’. It’s the name given to the fossilized remains of terrestrial vegetation.

Petrified Wood is the result of a tree turning into stone through the process of permineralization. All the organic materials of the tree have been replaced with silicate minerals, usually a quartz, while maintaining the wood’s original structure.

Unlike other kinds of fossils that are compressions or impressions, Petrified Wood is a three-dimensional representation of the original organic material.

The petrifaction process happens underground, when wood starts to get covered by sediments. It’s preserved at first due to lack of oxygen. Mineral-rich water that’s flowing through the sediments deposits minerals in the tree’s cells. As the tree’s lignin and cellulose start to decay, a stone mold also begins to form!

These stones were revered in the past as they were thought to contain the knowledge from the tree that they were created from.  Ancient people thought these stones had magical qualities. This was possibly due to the reverence that real trees held within many cultures. Fossilized Wood is created naturally in the earth from ancient trees that became fossilized over a very long period.

They are beneficial healing crystals for you to utilize as from this prolonged process energy was embodied within these stones that brings patience through on-going growth.

Many people like to use Petrified Wood to help connect with the energies of the Earth. Petrified Wood is a great way for city dwellers to keep the vibrations of nature near in the concrete jungle. Meditation with Petrified Wood may take you back to connect with a time when your Spirit was cradled by Nature. Petrified Wood encourages people to respect and look after their environment, ever finding ways to live simply, in harmony with the Spirit of the planet. Carry Petrified Wood with you when you feel disconnected from Nature.

Petrified Wood is a stone to assist with grounding and stabilising one’s emotions.

A true stone of transformation securing the base chakra by grounding oneself whilst enabling opening of the third eye chakra raising one’s awareness.

Being the only crystals that bridges the mineral kingdom with the plant kingdom Petrified Wood blesses us with a unique combination of earth energies.