The most common kind of "petrified stump" found at Florissant Fossil Beds is the redwood Sequoia, such as "Big Stump" pictured at left. When you visit the park, look for two saw blades embedded into Big Stump; before Florissant was a National Monument, someone tried to cut Big Stump into pieces by using saws! Needless to say, the effort was for the most part, fruitless, and the saw blades are still stuck in Big Stump to this day! Why do we not remove the saw blades? Because the saw blades are also a part of the Monument's history, and besides, its a great testament to man's folly.

Directly behind Big Stump, visitors are able to observe the volcanic mudflow of the lower mudstone in which the petrified stumps were buried, and directly above that, the middle shale unit (see Rocks & Geology for more information).

Petrified stumps in Florissant aren't just "cool" to look at, they tell us a great deal about the environment in which they grew. Near the Monument's amphitheater, where you can hear Ranger-led talks, we have what we call "The Redwood Trio," three separate but interconnected trunks growing together as one plant - a fossil vegetative clone! It is the only known fossil redwood trio in existence. Modern "family circles" are rare but have been observed in California's redwood forest. Redwood trios occur when the roots that stick out of the ground near a pre-existing tree (called "burls") sprout trunks, then the original trunk dies, leaving the three clones to grow.

Microscopic Information

Even more information can be obtained by looking at petrified wood under the microscope. Here are three thin-sections showing various orientations cut across Sequoia-like petrified wood. The orientation of the thin sections correspond to the diagram at right. You can also click on the stump diagram for a view of that thin-section.

Cross-section	Radial	Tangential

Radial view - this is taken parallel to the axis of growth and passes from the outer surface of the stem toward the center of the stem, down along a radius of the tree trunk. The walls of the tracheids are visible as parallel vertical lines. A portion of a ray is visible left of center (the ray cells look like horizontal lines in this photograph). The circular structures in the tracheids were passageways for fluid exchange between the tracheids.

Tangential view - this is also taken parallel to the axis of growth, but it does so along a tangent to the growth rings, rather than at right angles through growth rings. The tangential view shows the tracheids (the long open areas) as well as scattered rays (the narrow vertical lines with tiered cells).