How is Ambrosia Maple made

[Brad_bb]

From what I can tell, it's just silver maple that the ambrosia beetle  bores in.  Is it just silver maple?  

When does the streaking occur- while the tree is still living, when it's standing dead, or after it's cut and sits around for a while?  

[Ianab]

My understanding is the bug gets into the living tree, and carries a symbiotic fungus with it. The fungus grows on the walls of it's little tunnel, and the stain from that spreads up and down the grain of the wood for a distance. The grub actually eats the fungus, not the wood. This doesn't seem to harm a healthy tree much, the bug eventually leaves it's hole, it gets healed over, but the hole and fungal stain are left in the wood. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosia_beetle

[SwampDonkey]

All maples get ambrosia. I have some sugar maple wood in the frame of the loom that has a couple holes from ambrosia and corresponding stain. It generally attacks dead wood left stacked or live trees that have injury and rot. Mostly logs laying too long in warm weather. They are another type of bark beetles, instead they cultivate the fungus. Spruce bark beetles here are quick to attack cut wood or dead standing. In no time a stick of spruce will be peppered with holes with sawdust on the ground around here.

[customsawyer]

I have some ambrosia quarter sawed sycamore. Totally different look from ambrosia maple.

[DWyatt]

Here's some curly ambrosia red maple. Dad's woods is loaded with red maple. Some curly, all with ambrosia.



 

[YellowHammer]

The best ambrosia marks, or flags, happen generally when the tree is standing. The beetles bore in, deposit their eggs in the galleries, and do their thing.  Each layer of "flags" indicates a different growth year of the tree, and can be easily "read" to interpret the growth pattern and health of the tree during that year.  Longer flags indicate a more robust sap rise and fall that year, while a wider flag indicates more growth.  I have seen ambrosia beetle bore into non healthy and dying trees, but since there is very little sap movement the flags are unremarkable and uninteresting.  They just make holes and no flags  Typically, ambrosia beetle holes are characterized by a black color, as opposed to powder post beetles which make a hole with no color so it's easy to spot them vs other beetles, whether they leave a flag or not.

The ambrosia marks are not confined to maples, although they are most prominent in the multiple species of soft maple.  They don't seem to like hard maple too much, at least around here, and the flags are much skinnier and shorter.  I have also seen some incredible flags in sycamore and sell a lot of ambrosia sycamore, as well as in sassafras, box elder, and a few other species.  In sycamore sometimes, and especially box elder, the flags turn a bright red and are very dramatic.  

I used to have a logger who could identify standing maples with ambrosia populations because they produce "strings" when they bore in and push the frass out of the bark of the tree.  I could put in an order for ambrosia logs and he would go to the maple swamps and cut me a few, while saving the other maples for other customers.

Ambrosia maple is considered a defect in commercial maple, so the logs are segregated and are a lower value and don't make "clean, white" boards.  For furnitures it's amazing, but for countertops and cutting boards, not a desirable wood because the holes trap food and need to be sealed.  Cabinet makers won't touch it, they need "sorted clean and bright", and can be stained and painted if desired.  So it has a specific customer, depending on it's end use.      

Of course, spalted wood is a completely different thing than ambrosia. This is a beautiful ambrosia table made by a professional furniture maker for a customer of ours.  

[moodnacreek]

The loggers called it the shot gun beetle because the maple tree looks like it got hit with no. nines. They would not cut these trees for saw logs as their buyers would not take them. It is also called worm track maple, the lumber, but it sells better with the name Ambrosia. Then we have spalted  maple that should be called rot.

[SwampDonkey]

Not to be confused with the fly larvae that bores live wood, which heals and continues growth. Makes a chestnut brown squiggly line with no stain, no hole because it grows over.

I never see ambrosia here in live healthy maple at all. Which has been consistent reporting in research papers. Dead and stressed trees are preferred and seen in green logs. There is often something unforeseen in a standing tree that makes it unhealthy.

[Don P]

I panelled Annie Dillard's studio in it. While she was admiring and asking about it I described the tree and how one will sometimes appear wet and can be smelled for some distance in summer. She began to tell me about "the honey tree" in her woods, which I happened to know, it was a particularly gnarly, always wet from all the leaking holes, ambrosia red maple. In the trade it is sold as wormy maple and commands pallet prices but whenever I've made something from it, it leads to a request for more from someone else.

When Mr Beetle flies up above the trees at courting time, he carries with him a sample of his best black fungus tucked in his armpit. "Hey baby, just taste that fine funk. There's more like that growing in the dark back at the crib. Wanna come see my etchings?" The sweet flowing sap irrigates and fertilizes the ambrosia beetle's garden, they are farmers. One of the things she is looking for is diversity, she will try to mate with someone outside of her usual pantry.

This is columbian timber beetle I believe, another ambrosia beetle, this is tulip poplar. He happens to be the worm in wormy chestnut as well.



 

The grown over tracks are usually called glassworm or turkey tracks. They are the scarring from a cambium miner. Very common in ash.

Bugs are illiterate, they can eat outside of their regular fare.

[SwampDonkey]

I cut a dying aspen this fall with ambrosia. The tree had been in decline and dried up this summer. I cut another that was still green, had a bad centre and a bad canker way up and worm holes the size of your finger deep in the centre. Likely a buprestid beetle. I'm guessing it just followed the rot in. Seen the holes when split through the centre.

[Cdaniels1377]

Well no one said it so

When the mama-ambrosia falls in love with the papa-maple, they spend lots of time together and then all of a sudden one day the new new shows up and BAM- AMBROSIA MAPLE