While at my great-granddaughter's 2nd birthday party I wandered with camera in hand around my daughter's lovely home yard and this pollared tree, one of several lining her drive, caught my eye by its' unique growth since being pollared many years ago by the original owner and on closer inspection the oozings of the deep amber coloured sap brought jeweled thoughts to my mind of ancient amber deposits and millennium old insects trapped therein (Amber is fossilized tree resin (not sap), which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry.
There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents. Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions. Amber occurring in coal seams is also called resinite, and the term ambrite is applied to that found specifically within New Zealand coal seams) so not knowing if I am looking at sticky sap or sticky resin I can only dream about this particular lump of jewel like mass somehow being fossilized and found by what ever intelligent life that may exist that geological time into the future.
As always I have used the amazing Wikipedia - a free noncommercial site - for some of my information so if you are of that mind set that admires and supports such things then please donate to their website to keep them around.
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