Beautiful burls

I look for lots of things when traveling on vacation. Not surprisingly, many of those things have to do with woodworking.

While that mostly entails admiring the woodworking of other makers, a lot of times it’s just great examples of wood itself. And nothing draws my eye more than a great burl popping up in an unexpected place, like the one below.

That beauty is a great example of burl on Prunus avium, or bird cherry, something I’d never seen in the wild before. In this case, though, “in the wild” happened to be at a bus stop just outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland. What’s more, it wasn’t the only one. There were several of these trees lining the street, and each had at least one burl, but some had two or three.

Why so many in such a small sampling of trees in such a very limited area? Maybe it’s the weather or sunlight conditions next to the cathedral or the type of care Dublin city maintenance provides. Maybe it’s the Guinness. I have no idea.

What I do know is that these things are taunting me. They never seem to pop up where I could talk to a landowner about cutting a few (or at a time or location where I’m actually equipped to do so). But the moment Sally and go on vacation to a foreign land, they seem to be everywhere. You may recall that I saw some huge UK burls when visiting Stratford-Upon-Avon a couple summers ago.

I suppose I should console myself with the fact these are much better off right in the beautiful location they already are, plus the fact that I could never get one of these into my carry-on anyway. And, if that doesn’t console me, there’s always the Guinness.