Tough as logs are, the grinding of sand, water and ice are relentless. Within a decade or two any drowned conifer but cedar turns punk, grows waterlogged and joins the rocks and crayfish as features of the river's bottom. And even after burial, decomposition continues. The log breaks into filaments, the filaments become gray mush, the mush becomes mud, washes downriver, comes to rest in side channels. The side channels fill and gradually close.
New trees sprout from the fertile muck.
The cycle goes on. There are, however, parts of every drowned tree that refuse to become part of this cycle. But in the bed of a river, after the parent log has broken down and vanished, these stubborn masses take on a very different appearance' and so perhaps deserve a different name. Like enormous fangs, often with a connected, cross-grained root. It took me awhile to realize, when I found my first, that it had once been part of a tree.