Buttons : Wood

Buttons are made from nearly every type of wood. The oldest buttons (from the 18th century) are made from hardwoods such as apple, boxwood or yew, and are very simple. In the 19th century wooden buttons became often very elaborate by carving, painting, burning, mixing with other materials like metals, shell etc. During World War II, wood was used for many buttons because all other materials like metal and plastic were scarce. It's often difficult to determine the kind of wood used in a button.
(from Piney Mountain Cottage)
I did a search on the internet for modern wooden buttons and found some great specimens:

1. Tree branch carved from Rodricano
2. Wood burned, coloured and lacquered from mrsjabberjaw
3. Tree branches with bark from Amberae
4. Exotic padauk from riverrim
5. Cipres from floresdelsur
6. Woodburned from Roosterick
7. Cut and water coloured from popcorntree
8. Ambrosia maple from Hendywood
9. Carved boxwood mermaid shank button from summer62
10. Olive from DianaLee95667
11. Mountain mahogany from South4th
12. Painted disks from stardogstudio
13. Woodburned from weiwenhaitun
14. Painted from Lamercerie
15. Tree branch from wookwoodworking
16. Pine from woodtoy

I would love to try making my own wooden buttons; after some surfing I found the following how-to's:
Pikku-Kettu Knits: A Button is Born (from tree branches)
Tottie Tomato & Noreen Crone-Findlay, Tottie Talks Crafts: Green Crafts - Twig buttons with spool knitted cords
Rosalind Porter, Piney Mountain Cottage: Make you own buttons (from tree branches)
Jeanne Paglio, eHow: How to make wooden buttons (from wood shapes)
Arts and Crafts: wooden buttons (from a dowel)