Ever see wood like this? Cool fossil imprints.

[DawnNC]

I’m still cleaning out the back of my property.. mostly weed covered humps of junk and tree stumps. Found a few animal skulls. This was a total surprise and never seen anything like it.
One of the old cut stumps I was about to toss to the burn pile had all these markings on it...
Further inspection shows tons of imprints of either flowers or bugs (haven’t figured it out yet)
It’s about 4’ tall and 3” wide. I find it mezmorizing and beautiful! I’ll be cleaning it up today to really show the imprints. Not quite sure if I call it a fossil record or
What do you think?
-Dawn

 

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[Royn2751]

Results from boring insects under the bark.
Probably what killed it.

 

[Almy]

Agreed, it's under-bark borers. They can also do this after the tree is dead but before the bark comes off.

 

[Trezurehunter]

If it was an Ash tree, those are the markings of the Emerald Ash Borer, which wiped out Ash trees everywhere. I have the same markings on a tree in my yard, but we caught it quick enough and I was able to have someone come out and treat the tree and save it.

 

[DawnNC]

Thank you for the replies and info. There are a bunch of old cut trees from the previous owner; I was wondering what they were doing! I’ll have to keep an eye out on the live trees.
I narrowed that down to elm or ash. There are other green ash trees so it probably is.

I’ll take take this chunk of wood on as a project.. some oil or clear coat should bring out the “pattern”
Will hang it someplace.