When building a dam for hydroelectric power, artificial lakes are often created, thus submerging trees and forests.

One of these trees is Osage Orange, whose wood does not rot and slowly turns from orange to a greenish grey, and then almost black. This is only found in a limited area within Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Mr. Paul Veerkamp (shrrkey101@hotmail.com) kindly provided samples from many different logs, at different stages of curing.

We tested chatoyance on these and found that -apparently- the darker the sample, the least its chatoyance.