Sandra Gilmore, age 11, of Fredrickton, New Brunswick, Canada, for her question:

How do the bird's eye  patterns get into maple wood?

Ordinary hardwood maple is used to make shiny furniture that has a warm orange glow. It is beautiful to behold    but bird's eye maple is something extra special. Its rich maple wood is dotted with spots about I/8th of an inch wide and each little dot reminds you somewhat of the bright round eye of a bird. Ordinary maples are plentiful almost everywhere across our land, but most of the extra special bird's eye maple trees grow in woods on Michigan's northern peninsula.

Many people assume that the dainty bird's eye spots are related to the knots in pinewood and therefore caused by scars left by fallen twigs and branches. But this is not so. The little bird's eyes are dents in the annual growth rings of the wood. Nobody knows how or why they form    so Andy cannot give the answer to today's question. He can, however, report that sawing the wood to reveal the bird's eye pattern requires the skill of experts. Sometimes the trunk is turned while the saw slices a continuing layer of thin wood around and around it. The layers are flattened and used as surface veneers.