This piece is one of the nicer, more colorful and more unusual medium sized pieces I've finished from this rarely seen petrified forest. It's truly a beautiful piece of petrified wood with very rich and unusual color along with fabulous wood grain! This is one of those pieces that is so highly agatized that the color changes pretty dramatically depending on the light you view it in. If you are the fortunate winner of this piece I guarantee th...at you're in for a very pleasant surprise! This beautiful slab of petrified wood comes from a deposit that sets the standard in wood grain preservation for Chinese petrified wood! This material is increasingly difficult to come by and is one of the more intricately preserved petrified wood specimens you'll ever see. It's sometimes called "tree jade" in China although it is actually agate. The incredibly detailed wood grain of this ancient conifer reveals its true origin, even under a microscope! This piece is cut as a cross section from an incomplete log showing the growth rings in perfect detail. The back of the slab is irregular as a big flake came off during cutting that covered about 1/4 of the surface area and it gets pretty thin near the top right side. We have carefully polished this piece to a mirror perfect finish to reveal all of the timeless detail of the once vibrant life now frozen inside this stone! I was able to locate a few pieces of gem grade petrified wood from a dealer I met in Tucson several years ago and have been slowly preparing some of the specimens I purchased from him. This slab is from a slower growing conifer that shows the cell structure very well through the entire stone face. In the best zones, I can clearly see the perfect honeycomb like cell structure you see in conifers like redwood and cypress, but for all I know this might be some other exotic conifer. The wood is richly colored in shades that are unmatched by any other forest I've seen. These slabs cover a broad color spectrum including some with pinks, reds, purples, blacks, yellows and white. These slabs had initially been imported with a terrible finish that was dull, wavy, chipped out and generally lifeless - but I could tell by the "ring" of the slabs that they'd likely polish well and I'm pleased to say they exceeded my expectations significantly!! I was happier still after I polished it and had the chance to confirm the wood structure was indeed preserved well. I wasn't sure any of it was going to polish but it really finished up nicely. There is plenty of high grade agate in this specimen to show off the fine wood grain details right down to the tiny cells. The growth rings are fine and tightly packed together. A wonderful and truly rare treasure from a far off continent that few collectors have ever even seen! I have seen a couple of randomly shaped chunks on stands from China (the Chinese value these as "viewing stones"). Fine rounds are rarely seen however and very few collectors have had the chance at such rarities until now! This nice slab comes from one of our most colorful pieces. It would be a great piece to round out a collection and might be the only partial round of this variety you'll ever get a chance at with this much color. The collector quality finish we've produced on this stone allows you to see the cell features easily with a 10x loup in several areas (the rings are visible to the naked eye). This specimen has been carefully polished to show off all the gemmy detail inside. It took a beautiful polish, testament both to the quality of the specimen and the exceptional lapidary work we apply to every piece we produce! It's another one of those beautiful fossil treasures that some happy Sticks-in-Stones customer is going to flip over! This is a perfectly polished slab with an amazing depth in the finish. It measures about 8" x 5" across the polished face and is sliced about 1/3" thick (most of it, but the missing flake on the back brings it down to a very thin edge at top right). Weight is about 0.84 lbs. Display stand shown is sold separately. A nice, unique naturally wonderful stone collectible exclusively from Sticks-in-Stones Lapidary.