My suspicion is, were you to sand the inside you'd see some nice figure. In other words, I suspect anything you do following the grain is going to offer up some beautiful product, PROVIDING you make the pieces as big as you can.
Had a genius drop off a load of maple firewood years back. The entire cord was figured maple and he had no clue as to what he had (he tried to sell a short cord as a cord, so don't feel sorry for him). We are still using some of the spurtles I made from it. The figuring is yet beautiful 20 years later.