The 61^st Texas Legislature doubled up in 1969 to adopt both a gem and a stone as official state symbols in the same brief resolution. Gov. Preston Smith added his signature, thereby enshrining both Texas blue topaz and petrified palmwood, the remnant of tree trunks from 30 million years ago that turn to stone through fossilization.

Naturally occurring Texas topaz is found only in Mason County in the Hill Country in clear or colored fragments, the rarest being blue topaz. Blue topaz’s proponent was a state representative from Austin, Bob Armstrong, who later would serve as Texas Land Commissioner for a dozen years. Before the Legislature’s vote, samples of blue topaz and petrified palmwood, which Armstrong also promoted, were exhibited in the Capitol’s north hall.

Lapidarists are drawn to palmwood because of its hardened silica content, which can be polished, and its range of colors and patterns. It can be converted into distinctive slabs or jewelry, all because palm trees flourished in pre-historic tropical forests in what is now a broad belt of inland Texas terrain that was once the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico. The trees were enveloped by mud and clay before they decomposed, allowing their fossilization.

“All the organic material has been slowly replaced by inorganic materials, making it a stone, even though it may still have the exact same appearance of the original plant or tree,” says Dan Gerig, founder of Rock Seeker, a robust website for rock enthusiasts. “So, the petrified palmwood still looks as if you’re holding an actual piece of palmwood, when, in fact, you are holding a stone.”

Texas also has an official gemstone cut—the “Lone Star Cut”—the only state with such a designation. Featuring a five-pointed star that is carved into the “pavilion,” or bottom portion of a gem, the Lone Star Cut is a superb enhancement for Texas blue topaz, as the 1977 gemstone cut resolution pointed out.

Brothers Gary Worden, a science teacher and gem faceter, and Paul Worden Jr., a physicist, collaborated on the Lone Star design and chose not to copyright it. Thus, the legislature’s resolution describes the faceting process in minute detail, which any artisan with proper tools could follow. The brothers’ cousin, a Midland County commissioner and mineral buff, appeared before a legislative committee to tout the Wordens’ Lone Star Cut.