This tree is as hard as steel and is an excellent material for making cutting boards, but it is rare nowadays.

There are thousands of different kinds of trees in our country. Besides the common ones seen along rural roads, many rare trees are also hidden deep in the mountains. In places such as Guangxi and Yunnan in our country, "hardwoods" are produced, which are trees with extremely hard wood. The representatives among them are rosewood, red sandalwood and other trees. They are very well-known high-grade woods, mainly used to make furniture. The hardwood to be discussed today is less famous than rosewood and red sandalwood, but its uses are more down-to-earth. It is an excellent material for making cutting boards. In rural areas, if any household had such a cutting board, the neighbors would all envy them. So what kind of tree is it?

This tree has a very special name, called "xianmu" (Burretiodendron hsienmu), because its growth rings are wide on one side and narrow on the other, very much like the patterns on a clam shell, so people call it xianmu. In fact, xianmu is a type of ironwood. Its wood is quite dense and heavy, and it is said that it can sink as soon as it enters water. Xianmu is as hard as steel and is a kind of tree that is very difficult to fell, and also difficult to process. Special tools for cutting ironwood are required. Among the people, xianmu is known as being impervious to swords and spears. If you strike its cross section, you can hear a sound similar to striking metal. Someone tried to drive a nail into it, but it could not be driven in.

Why is xianmu so hard? In addition to its relatively dense grain, it is also related to its growing environment. Because xianmu likes to grow on limestone slopes, its roots absorb a large amount of limestone minerals. These substances accumulate in the trunk, making the already dense xianmu even harder. In addition, xianmu grows very slowly and is difficult to grow into usable timber. Often a good xianmu needs a hundred years to mature. The longer it grows, the harder the wood becomes. The oldest known xianmu is already 2300 years old, less than 50 m tall and more than 4 m in diameter, located in Longzhou County, Guangxi.

Xianmu has beautiful grain, is rot-resistant and water-resistant, has good insect resistance, great toughness and low water permeability. It is a material used for making mechanical shims, axles and handmade planing benches, but among the people it is more often used to make cutting boards. Ordinary wooden cutting boards easily become muddy, especially when chopping meat filling, which feels very unhygienic. Cutting boards made of xianmu do not have this problem. They do not become muddy, are very clean, and can be used with confidence for cutting vegetables and chopping meat filling. Xianmu is very heavy, and its cutting boards are also much heavier than cutting boards made from other woods, but now there are not many left.

Because as the value of xianmu was developed, it was heavily logged by people over 30 years, and now there are not many left. It has also been listed as a national second-class protected plant, so even if xianmu is found in the wild, it cannot be cut down!