Woman explains on TikTok what tree beads are and where to find them

Attentive walkers have probably already discovered them, the tree pearls, known in technical language as callus. These bark growths are necessary for the tree.

Tree pearl, witch egg, gnubbel or tree tuber – if you walk through the forest with your eyes open and look at trees, you may have already seen one of these strange growths on the bark, which in arboriculture are called callus. A user reveals what this is all about and what you can do with these tree beads TikTok.

Tree beads form through the tree’s self-healing process

In a video on the TikTok-Blog The.Waldeule A woman goes searching for pearls in the forest. She doesn’t find them on the ground like truffles, but often well camouflaged on tree trunks, for example on beech or oak trees. Sometimes they are bulging, sometimes smooth, the size of a thumb or like a huge egg – which is why they are nicknamed dragon eggs. To put it simply, these are “small wooden balls that the tree forms when it heals itself in one place,” explains The.Waldeule. They are not to be confused with tree resin.

When the tree has finished forming these knobs, the tree can reject them. And if they can be removed without great force, they are no longer connected to the trunk wood and no hole is created, she explains TikTok-User. Without bark, these tree beads are beautifully grained and flatter the hand, but you can also make jewelry out of them.

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It takes years for a tree pearl to form

The other users are very interested and some already have experience with tree beads:

• “Oh great. Stumbled across it here by chance and learned something again. I’ve seen these beads many times and never knew what they were. 😃”
• “So far I’ve only found them on birch trees and not particularly large ones either.”
• “Cool, I have to go straight away tomorrow.”
• “I found my first one today too. 😁”

Scientifically, these growths are not referred to as tree cancer, but rather as a growth or callus. The tree forms this bead-like wood after damage to close the wound and is a protection against invading germs. The flooding process can take several years.