Non-invasive wood identification of historical musical bows

We identified the wood of the sticks of eight bows in the historical collection of musical instruments in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. Wood identification was carried out non-invasively (i.e., without sampling wood on the original objects), because the removal of samples from fine musical in-struments will affect their aesthetic integrity and / or functional quality. Identification attempts using re-flected light microscopy on wood surfaces, gave only partial results due to the poor quality of the surfaces and the particular geometry of the sticks that does not have any transverse surface. Application of Syn-chrotron light X-ray microtomography (μCT) in phase-contrast mode, to the whole sticks allowed us to obtain stacks of transverse-sectional images that, processed as virtual volumes, revealed several anatomical features. With μCT it was possible to identify three bows as Brosimum guianense (Moraceae) one bow as Caesalpinia echinata (Caesalpiniaceae) and four bows as Manilkara sp. (Sapotaceae).