The African collection of the Slovene Ethnographic Museum (SEM) in Ljubljana, Slovenia, holds objects of everyday life from the Bambuti people from the Ituri forest, in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The items were collected by the anthropologist Paul Joachim Schebesta, possibly during his expeditions around 1930. The objects containing wood were selected for wood identification by using microscopic wood identification, with the help of the InsideWood database and reference samples from the xylarium of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. The investigated musical instrument, a wooden zither, was made of wood of Musanga cecropioides, the handle of the shield of Alstonia sp., the dagger and sheath of Autranella congolensis or another high density species of Sapotaceae, and the crossbow of Nauclea diderichii (bow) and Xylopia sp. (stock). Wood identification helped us to gain additional information on the origin, knowledge of wood, and time of the collection of objects in the Congo.
We present a technical note that supplements published procedures on optimal sample preparation for performing wood and phloem formation analyses. Before beginning sampling, it is important to learn about the characteristics of the tree or shrub species to be investigated. Some tips are given how to use the Trephor tool in the best way, how to remove the outer hard bark (periderm), how microcores should be handled after removal from the tree, and how they should be oriented for embedding in paraffin, and cutting thin sections for microscopy. Possible defects that may result from improper handling are illustrated and discussed. We also present optimal images to accurately identify different cell development stages in phloem and xylem, which is particularly challenging in hardwoods and Mediterranean tree and shrub species.
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