Stump with a lush coat of ice fur
Posted: January 3rd, 2016, 8:54 am
While hiking in Moran State Park on Orcas Island on a very cold morning last week, we encountered this bizarre wonder of nature:
It was a rotten stump covered with a lush coat of incredibly fine ice fur, maybe 2 inches long, that disintegrated when I touched it. I'd never seen anything like this. I'd seen plenty of hoar frost before, and the crunchy ice crystals that rise up from muddy ground when it freezes, but this stuff was much finer and longer than either of those. It turns out this this phenomenon is called ice hair, and results from just the right combination of mycelium fungus-covered wood and cold temperatures. Scientists have only recently worked out the mechanism that leads to this. It generally grows only at night and melts off in the daytime, so we happened upon this stump at just the right time.
It was a rotten stump covered with a lush coat of incredibly fine ice fur, maybe 2 inches long, that disintegrated when I touched it. I'd never seen anything like this. I'd seen plenty of hoar frost before, and the crunchy ice crystals that rise up from muddy ground when it freezes, but this stuff was much finer and longer than either of those. It turns out this this phenomenon is called ice hair, and results from just the right combination of mycelium fungus-covered wood and cold temperatures. Scientists have only recently worked out the mechanism that leads to this. It generally grows only at night and melts off in the daytime, so we happened upon this stump at just the right time.
