Golden Phoebe Wood Is Great for Roof Beams, but Only So-So for Furniture

When I talked about the white ash tree before, I mentioned storytelling performances; today I will talk about a crosstalk piece, namely the routine from Mr. Liu Baorui's "Emperor and Ministers in Conflict" in which the hunchback impeaches the emperor. In the routine, Liu Yong makes a bet with Heshen and brings an accusation against the Qianlong Emperor, the charge being tomb robbing. The detail about this "tomb robbing" in the crosstalk is that when the Qianlong Palace caught fire, no giant timber could be found at short notice to serve as beams and pillars for the rebuild, so the palace halls of the Ming Tombs were dismantled to obtain the wood.

In fact, this routine is not entirely fiction on the part of the crosstalk performers; the Qianlong Emperor really did this. In 1787 he ordered the repair of the Ming Tombs, and one of the ministers overseeing the work was none other than Liu Yong. The plan at the time was to demolish the large structures and rebuild them smaller, which yielded a great deal of timber, except that the salvaged timber was not used to repair the Qianlong Palace and instead vanished without a trace. The very wood that the emperor was obsessed with day in and day out was the famousGolden Phoebe Wood。

The Ling'en Hall at Changling, one of the Ming Tombs, is the largest surviving hall built of phoebe wood. Image: Andrew Bell / wikimedia

What Is "Phoebe Wood"?

Despite its fame, golden phoebe wood is not a botanical term, nor even a standard name in wood science; it is in fact merely a folk name, meaning"phoebe wood" with golden threads。

The reason for the quotation marks is that this "phoebe wood" is not the star of today's piece, Phoebe zhennan, but a collective term for the wood of many species in the genera Phoebe and Machilus of the laurel family,and P. zhennan is merely one of themthe specific epithet zhennan being the pinyin of its old name zhennan. Unless otherwise specified below, when I speak of phoebe wood I mean the wood of this whole group of plants.

The tall, upright P. zhennan at the Chengdu Botanical Garden. Image: Daderot / wikimedia

Left: Phoebe neurantha of the genus Phoebe, its tepals pressed close against the fruit; right: the fruit of Machilus thunbergii of the genus Machilus, its tepals curled back. Images: Jens G. Rohwer / myspecies.info; alchetron.com

A Roof Beam, and Also a Fine Coffin

Whether in the genus Phoebe or the genus Machilus, the wood is called phoebe wood, and since ancient times it has been a popular timber, except that it was rarely used to make furniture. Its two greatest uses were, first,beams and pillarsand second,coffinsWhy must it be these two? That requires starting with the wood properties of phoebe itself.

First, phoebe wood is fragrant, and unlike camphor wood (the wood of several species in the genus Cinnamomum of the laurel family) it is not pungent but rathera soft, fresh scent ⟧23⟧and it is not prone to insect attack. Second, phoebe wood has, and it does not attract wood-boring insects. Secondly, nanmu'sexcellent dimensional stabilitywith an average swelling and shrinkage rate of 2.7%, and only 2% in the case of carbonized sunken phoebe wood. The swelling and shrinkage rate is an indicator of the dimensional stability of wood, that is, the extent to which the wood expands and contracts at different moisture contents; below 3% it counts as very low. In addition, the phoebe tree itself is tall and straight and can yield large timber, so sawing out big pillars and big planksrequires no joiningmaking it naturally the ideal material for beams and pillars and for coffins.

Changling of the Ming dynasty is the tomb of the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di, and its Ling'en Hall is supported by 60 large pillars of solid phoebe wood. Image: ImagineChina

The reader may well ask: none of these advantages are a problem for making furniture either, so why is it no good? In fact it is not that it is no good, but in ancient times, apart from cultural custom, phoebe had one biggest problem, namely that it is asoftwoodwith a density that is not very high and a texture that is fairly soft; never mind knocking or bumping it,a scratch from a fingernail leaves a markFor a big pillar or a roof beam that does not matter, as it is hardly visible, and the dead person in the coffin has even less to say about it, but if a set of furniture were made and placed at home, being covered in cuts and bruises would not look good. So in the past, even when phoebe wood was used for furniture, it basically had to be painted and gilded,with the phoebe wood itself amounting to the wooden coreand any other softwood would have done just as well.

Golden phoebe wood furniture. Image: Sun Meng / ImagineChina

In Ming and Qing architecture, phoebe wood was used in great quantities. Although the Qianlong Emperor did not really steal timber to repair the Qianlong Palace, his own Yuling tomb also used phoebe wood as the main material, sourced from the four provinces of Guangdong, Sichuan, Huguang (today's Hubei and Hunan provinces) and Fujian. The home of the Qianlong Emperor while he was alive, namely Beijing'sPalace Museumalso originally had many buildings of phoebe wood, but through the ravages of war and the passage of time, many phoebe components have been replaced during renovations, and nowthere are no buildings made purely of phoebe woodleft。

If you come to Beijing and want to see a great hall of phoebe wood, you can go to four places: first, theLing'en Hall at Changlingamong the Ming Tombs; second, theDaci Zhenru Hallin Beihai Park; third, theImperial Ancestral Templeand as for the fourth... you still have to look for it in crosstalk, namely the former residence of Heshen, today'sPrince Gong's Mansionwhich contains a Xijin Studio, commonly known as the Phoebe Immortal Tower.

The Daci Zhenru Hall in Beihai Park, whose entire wooden structure is made of golden phoebe wood. Image: vb

Where Do the "Golden Threads" Come From?

Having finished with phoebe wood, let us talk about these golden threads. Some cells in the xylem of phoebe wood containcrystals of calcium oxalate or calcium carbonateIf it is sawn along the tangential section, one seesa pale golden reflectionformed by the aggregation of these crystals, and together with the refraction effect of the fibre walls themselves, this produces a shimmering golden light.

The more numerous and finer the crystals and the greater the variation in the fibre grain, the stronger the golden sheen, and as the viewing angle changes it even forms a phantom effect like flowing water waves.P. zhennan is one of the species with a relatively good golden light effectbut it also depends on the specific growth conditions of each tree, and before it is sawn open one cannot know whether the golden light is good or bad.

Tangential section of phoebe wood. Image: Desert Porcupine

Golden phoebe wood is both beautiful and useful. From the Yongle period of the Ming dynasty to the Daoguang period of the Qing dynasty, the imperial household alone harvested it for more than 430 years, which brought about enormous changes in phoebe communities; large areas of phoebe forest are now rarely seen, and four species including P. zhennan are listed in the National Key Protected Wild Plants List, while 71 of the 82 species in the genus Machilus are threatened, so todaywild phoebe is strictly protected by law and logging is prohibited。

Fortunately, although wild individuals of phoebe grow slowly, inplantations it can rapidly reach commercial sizea 13-year-old phoebe plantation yields seven times the timber volume of a 20-year-old natural forest, so phoebe resources are not scarce today.

Leaves of P. zhennan. Image: Daderot / wikimedia

It Can Also Be a Semi-Fossil

Another kind of phoebe resource iscarbonized woodthat is, the so-called sunken wood, called ebony in some places, though it has nothing at all to do with the botanical ebony (several species of the genus Diospyros).

Carbonized wood is formed when trees are buried underground or under water during geological disasters such as landslides or mountain torrents,a semi-fossilIt therefore comes from places where high mountains and great rivers are concentrated, and is not found in plains.

The material properties of carbonized woodare more stable than ordinary wood of the same speciesand its colour is darker; for example, phoebe itself should be pale yellow, but carbonized phoebe turns deep yellow or dark green.

Carbonized phoebe wood. Image: Desert Porcupine

Leaves of the camphor tree. Image: yasashi.info

So the name phoebe wood not only does not refer to the wood of a single plant, but sometimes does not even refer to a single kind of wood. Although genuine phoebe wood is indeed a fairly good traditional material, it is not especially precious either; a few years ago it was hyped to a price of more than 100,000 or even several hundred thousand yuan per tonne, and after the market calmed down it fell to 20,000 to 30,000.

There is nothing reproachable about hot money chasing profits through speculation, but as individual consumers, even if we do not understand ecology and do not know which woods can be bought and which should not, we should still know that there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world. What you have your eye on is the prospect of appreciation, but what the seller has his eye on is your capital.

This article is the 240th piece in the fourth year of Species Calendar, from Species Calendar author @Desert Porcupine.

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