The standing trunks
Petrified trees upright in the positions they grew in.
**By slow atomic replacement, not by the wood itself transforming โ that is the key.** โ **First condition โ rapid burial**: exposed wood **rots and disappears** within years. **Petrification begins with a sudden burial that isolates the wood from oxygen and bacteria** โ done here by the **volcanic ash** that covered the forest at a stroke. โ **Second condition โ silica-rich water**: volcanic ash is **full of dissolved silica**, and rainwater carries it down into the buried wood. โ **The process**: water enters the **wood's cells** one by one, **and silica precipitates inside and around them** while the organic material breaks down extremely slowly โ **so minerals take the wood's place in exactly its form**. โ **The result**: **an extraordinarily precise cast** โ showing **growth rings**, **bark** and, under a microscope, **cell walls**. **So what you see is not petrified wood but a stone copy of it.** โ **The colours** (red, yellow, brown) come from **mineral impurities**: iron, manganese and others.
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**An entire forest turned to stone twenty million years ago, its trunks still standing where they grew** โ in western Lesbos, a UNESCO **Global Geopark**. This region was a **subtropical forest** some **twenty million years ago** โ sequoia, pine, palm and cinnamon. Then **volcanic eruptions buried it** suddenly under ash, **and silica-laden water seeped** into the wood's cells and replaced them atom by atom. โ **So the wood did not char but petrified**: it became stone retaining **growth rings, bark and cell structure** intact. โ **What sets Lesbos apart**: many trunks **still stand upright in the position they grew in, with their roots** โ not merely relocated fragments. โ And the modern museum at Sigri is excellent.
Petrified trees upright in the positions they grew in.
Wood and bark structure preserved in stone to microscopic detail.
An excellent modern museum explaining how the forest petrified.
Sigri, 81105 Lesbos, Greece