It's not uncommon to run across a piece of petrified wood that looks as if it has just been split from a living tree with an ax. This large specimen (hence the name - Specimen Ridge) was in a coulour near the bottom of the ridge. Every bit of the grain structure had been preserved, and even the tiny tracings of boring insects were still clearly visible beneath the stony bark. The wood is buried by volcanic ash, which cuts off oxygen to it. Then, over the millenia, water seeps through the ash and passes through the wood, leaving soluable minerals behind. Over time, the cellular structure of the wood is completely filled in and becomes colorful stone.
It is not wood that makes petrified wood colorful, but the chemical makeup of the groundwater that leaches through the buried wood. Minerals such as manganese, iron, and copper were in the water/mud during the petrification process. These minerals give petrified wood a variety of colors. Quartz crystals are colorless, but when iron is added to the process the crystals become stained with a yellow or red tint.

Following is a list of minerals and the colors that they bring to petrified wood:

Copper - green/blue
Cobalt - green/blue
Chromium - green/blue
Manganese - pink
Carbon - black
Iron Oxides - red, brown, yellow
Manganese Oxides - black
Silica - white, grey

A team of scientists have been able to create petrified wood in a lab in only a few days. The scientists at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Yakima, Washington, put a small cube of wood in an acid bath, then soaked it in a silica solution for days. The wood was air-dried, cooked in an argon-filled furnace at temperatures as high as 1,400 degrees and cooled in argon to room temperature. The result was a perfectly formed piece of silicon carbide that exactly replicated petrified wood. The carbide is extremely porous, and the scientists are now working on making petrified wood with narrow pores that will be even more porous. The substance would have valuable industrial applications.

Below: A dainty orchid graces a seep low on the ridge.