mutant soft maple

[low_48]

I cut into what I think is a real mutant red maple today. I can't get a pic since my wife has the camera with her in California, but wanted to know if any others have seen a log like this. It's about 30" in diameter,  the outside 5-6" of the log (really the sapwood) is really HIGHLY figured, the center is plain, regular grain. The figure has radial rays, very tight curl, blisters, and lots of tiny bark inclusions (it kind of reminds me of compressed popcorn). Is there such a thing as pomelle maple? I've cut two hard maple logs in the past years that had a similar radial rays and a few blisters, but that went all the way through the log. This stuff was just around the sap wood. Any ideas?

[SwampDonkey]

Well is it soft maple or hard maple? I've not seen curly with inclusions, but bird's eye in rock maple will have inclusions and it sometimes does not go past the sapwood. But, that type of bird's eye is not desirable to buyers. They want the figure all the the way through to the pith. Usually, dark heartwood has to be small in hard maple (20 %) to be best marketed. It is common for red maple to have curl on the but end and disappear 3 - 5 feet up the log.

[Ron Wenrich]

That sounds more like small burls than it does anything else.  I've seen that on some overgrown soft maple.  Curl in many species will disappear as you cut further into the log.  Oak and birch come to mind. 

I've also seen something like that in sycamore.  But, the sycamore seemed to be more like bud clusters similar to white oak.

[jim king]

I think what you have is a mutant simalar to the US Presidential candidates.  The outside is different than the inside.

[low_48]

Politicians that show us what we want to see to get elected? Now that's news! Jim, are you sure it's just the ones we get to chose from this time? 

I cut some more blanks today. This condition is definitely not cluster burls. Every bit of the sapwood has this condition. I'll get some pics next week. I'll cut a cookie before I get this all cut up so I can show you guys.