Rare Costa Rican hardwood, made one-of-one in Warner, Alberta.
Every piece starts as one tree. No two are alike.
That tree grew in a Costa Rican rainforest. The live edge keeps its real shape — every curve and knot stays exactly where it grew. And the grain is like a fingerprint: it can never be repeated.
Each forty-foot container carries the wood 6,000 km, from Costa Rica to a shop in Warner, Alberta. Every slab inside is one of a kind — once it becomes a piece, there will never be another like it.
Thirteen species that don't grow anywhere near here. Open a specimen to meet it.
Broad, sweeping grain that is often interlocked, with a coarse texture and honey-to-walnut colour. A surprisingly light wood for its size and easy to work — famous for yielding enormous single slabs.
Golden-brown heartwood with darker streaks, mostly straight grain, a medium-to-coarse texture and a gentle natural luster. Moderately heavy, easy to work, and it finishes beautifully.
Named for its snakeskin figure — one of the rarest and most striking woods in the world. Extremely dense and heavy, with a fine texture that polishes to a glass-like finish. Kept for the small pieces that earn it.
Cuts brown, then turns deep violet as light reaches it — a living colour no stain can copy. Straight grain, medium texture, very hard and very dense. It finishes smooth and holds its colour for decades indoors.
Salmon-red to reddish brown, darkening richly with age, with interlocked grain and a medium-to-coarse texture. One of the hardest woods in the collection — heavy, stiff, and built for generations of daily use.
Warm golden brown with occasional darker streaks, a medium-to-coarse texture, and grain that often interlocks. Moderate in weight, easy to work, and large enough for generous table slabs.
The benchmark for durability. Golden brown and straight-grained, with a coarse texture and a naturally oily feel that resists water and weather on its own. Moderately heavy and a pleasure to finish.
A striking two-tone wood: pale cream sapwood around a dark reddish-brown heart. Dense, hard and heavy, with a fine texture that turns and polishes beautifully.
Warm reddish tones with a medium-to-coarse texture and grain that shifts from straight to irregular, catching the light as you move around it. Moderate in weight and friendly to work.
Wildly variable — pale straw to deep red-brown, often streaked, sometimes burled. Typically interlocked grain with a medium-to-coarse texture and solid density. No two boards read the same.
Pale cream to soft yellow with a clean, quiet grain and a fine, even texture. Light in weight and easy to work — a calm counterpoint to the darker, heavier species in the container.
Straight or gently interlocked grain, medium texture, and a soft natural luster — little figure, but a genuinely handsome board. A heavy, high-density hardwood that still works easily: it saws cleanly and polishes to a fine finish.
A pale, olive-toned wood with a tight, fine grain — subtle and refined up close.
Earl has worked wood since he was seventeen. Nearly three decades of carpentry — the exacting, build-it-right kind — taught him how timber actually behaves: how it moves, how it finishes, how to read a board before the first cut.
Lost Species is where that trade becomes art. A slab is chosen for what it already is, then worked by hand — patiently, start to finish, in Warner — until it becomes the one thing it was meant to be.
Tables, wall works, architectural commissions. Each named, each one-of-one.
Lost Species works directly with the trade to specify one-of-one pieces into residential and commercial projects — from a single statement table to built-in, architectural live-edge work.
Every piece begins with a conversation. Tell Earl about your space and what you have in mind — the wood, the form, and what's possible come next.