This is our fifth wood feature giving information about rare and unusual woods of the world.   Some of these woods are used by Higdon Writing Instruments for making our custom writing instruments and others are ones that we think are interesting and worth highlighting.  This week we are highlighting a wood most everyone has seen but few are familiar with, African Blackwood. African Blackwood or Dalbergia melanoxylon is also known as known as Mpingo.  African Blackwood grows in most areas and countries south of the Saharan Desert in Africa but with most of the significant numbers being in eastern Africa. Tanzania (where it is the National Tree)

This week we are highlighting the burl form of one of the most authentically American woods, Redwood Burl. The Redwood or Sequoia sempervirens is native to a 450 mile long stretch along the Pacific coast stretching from southern Oregon to central California. This region has heavy summer rains but dry summers;

This week we are highlighting one of our more interesting woods that is native to
North America, Desert Ironwood. Desert Ironwood or Olneya tesota is native to the Sonora Desert region of California, Arizona, and northern Mexico.  It grows below 2,500 feet of elevation in dry regions which rarely freeze and its region is nearly exactly the same as the boundaries of the Sonora Desert. It is a multi-stem tree with lavender to pink flowers that grows to 45 feet tall and often is over 800 years old...

This is our second week of our weekly wood feature giving information about rare and unusual wood of the world. This week we wanted to highlight one of our most popular and favorite woods Amboyna Burl. This wood is a bit unusual in that it sometimes refers to the wood Narra, sometimes called Padauk, or Pterocarpus indicus.  The burl form of Narra was originally called Amboyna Burl only when it was in its veneer form but it now is accepted as the name of the burl regardless of its use.