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Wumu
The designa9on ‘Wumu’ means that the wood has become semi fossilised by immersion under the silt of a river or lake for thousands of years. It is a process rather than a species of wood. Submersion under mud is cri9cal to create anaerobic condi9ons which protect the wood from the destruc9ve effects of bacteria. Such wood cannot be produced to order. The logs pop up from 9me 9me 9me as lakes are dredged and their discovery, in the last few decades, have created na9onal news but before 1970 they were considered a nuisance and afforded no special aOen9on. It follows that logs discovered under such remarkable condi9ons don’t necessarily belong to a single species.
Phoebe zhennan is a tree species endemic to China where it occurs in Guizhou, Hubei and Sichuan provinces. Today, the species is threatened by habitat loss and so is under second-class na9onal protec9on in China. In the past, wood from this tree, referred to as nanmu in China was so valuable that only royal families could afford their use. Notably, whole logs of Phoebe zhennan wood were used to create pillars for the Forbidden City in Beijing.
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Nanmu wood is par9cularly valuable when has become semi-fossilized, and is then referred to as 烏⽊ Wu Mu, or "Black Wood". The price on the 2012 market could be as high as over $10,000 per cubic meter. ‘Mu’, in Chinese, means wood/tree so any wood described in English with the suffix ‘mu’ means we are here looking at exo9c woods equally mysterious to the western markets.
A giant 1,200 year old nanmu tree recently discovered in Hubei province is described in Chinese reports as a Lindera megaphylla, a flowering tree of the lauraceae family. An occasional ebony tree has been found leading to the erroneous asser9on that all wumu is ebony. It is not. Most logs discovered aIer several thousand years buried under river mud are dark in color but that doesn’t mean they are ebony .
