Comments on: Frost Flowers

Frost Flowers

OmieWise — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:08:52 -0800

Frost Flowers: "...they are made of such thin sheets of ice, they will melt away as the sun rises higher in the sky. You may get frost flowers again the following day, but unless the conditions are just right the chances are your first glimpse may be your last."

By: mathowie

mathowie — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:13:21 -0800

I don't quite understand how that is possible to create these in just one night, but my god those are incredible and amazing looking.

By: elizardbits

elizardbits — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:15:54 -0800

I thought this was a double of the arctic ice flowers and I am so glad it isn't because THESE ARE SUPER AWESOME.

By: agatha_magatha

agatha_magatha — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:19:57 -0800

They look like spun sugar--very beautiful! Thank you for sharing.

By: Chrysostom

Chrysostom — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:25:27 -0800

These are amazing, thanks for linking.

By: rainperimeter

rainperimeter — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:30:47 -0800

This is awesome. I took some photos of frost flowers (didn't know this had a name) on a hike last winter in the Columbia river gorge. Thanks!

By: MartinWisse

MartinWisse — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:36:52 -0800

I thought this would be about window frost or ice flowers, when you have a badly isolated single pane window and a cold, cold night and the inside gets covers in frost.

By: yoga

yoga — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:44:12 -0800

Those are gorgeous. I've never seen one - unless I didn't know what I was looking at. Definitely keeping eyes peeled next time I'm in the woods. Edit: forgot the link to wikipedia, since I was skeptical. :)

By: marginaliana

marginaliana — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:54:07 -0800

Extremely awesome.

By: treepour

treepour — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:00:38 -0800

These are beautiful! When I first saw the post I wondered if it was going to be about a different phenomenon I remember from my childhood. Certain leaves would get covered in a thin sheet of ice. If you were careful, you could slip the ice off of the leaf and have, for a brief moment, a perfectly-sculpted leaf made entirely of ice.

By: Fezboy!

Fezboy! — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:14:22 -0800

Even more beautiful than hoar frost, which completely blew me away the first time I saw it.

By: b33j

b33j — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:16:46 -0800

Cool!

By: arcticseal

arcticseal — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:19:42 -0800

These are very beautiful. Assume that this results in death or damage to the plant?

By: BWA

BWA — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:25:15 -0800

German phrase is Haareis, Hair Ice, and such a lot of pictures they have of them

By: marienbad

marienbad — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:40:25 -0800

Really beautiful. Would these be fractal in nature?

By: threeants

threeants — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:52:53 -0800

Wow, so so cool. Grew up in a winter-having region and yet have never heard of or seen this.

By: Splunge

Splunge — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:10:45 -0800

Ethereal and lovely. Thank you.

By: FatherDagon

FatherDagon — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:49:48 -0800

German phrase is Haareis, Hair Ice, and such a lot of pictures they have of them Heh, my first thought was 'Frost flowers? No, *Ghost Hair!*'

By: bakerina

bakerina — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:04:18 -0800

They really do look exactly like pulled sugar. Uncannily, hypnotically so. *resumes bug-eyed staring*

By: charlie don't surf

charlie don't surf — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:54:48 -0800

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:04:41 -0800

Wow, these are amazing. Incredible the volume of water/sap that is getting pushed through those stems in one night. charlie don't surf's link has some great historical stuff on this phenomenon.

By: msalt

msalt — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:58:54 -0800

Thanks! I've only seen this in Ladakh, India, basically in the Himalayas while on a trek, but it's fresh in my mind 25 years later.

By: oneirodynia

oneirodynia — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:17:11 -0800

I strongly doubt that it's "sap". All those photos show stems of plants that are dead already. I imagine they're actually hollow and collect moisture that then exudes through fissures.

By: lollusc

lollusc — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:21:25 -0800

Those are incredible. I wonder if there's ever been an ask.me question about them? ("What is this alien ice structure I found this morning and how did it get there?)

By: empatterson

empatterson — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:45:59 -0800

I have always wanted to see one (or more!) of these. So lovely.

By: msalt

msalt — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:49:35 -0800

Definitely not sap, because they evaporate in the sun pretty quickly. I found a photo of one I saw in Ladakh, back in 1987.

By: Goofyy

Goofyy — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 04:31:08 -0800

I'm puzzled. I grew up in Michigan and lived 6 years in an even colder place. I spend a lot of time outdoors. I'm quite observant. Yet I've never seen this phenomenon, unless I thought it was something else.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 05:04:30 -0800

This appears to be mostly a linkjack from: Ice Ribbons, Ice Flowers, Frost Flowers or whatever they might be called by Dr. James R. Carter, Professor Emeritus Geography-Geology Department Illinois State University It does. That link doesn't have as many pictures, but it does have more interesting stuff in the text.

By: TedW

TedW — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:11:49 -0800

I see these from time to time, most commonly in dirt (like these); living in the woods helps. We have had some much-needed rain lately with more tomorrow, and it is suposed to get down to 30 degrees (F) Friday morning, which should make for good condtions.

By: charlie don't surf

charlie don't surf — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:54:29 -0800

That link doesn't have as many pictures, but it does have more interesting stuff in the text. Look around his site, he has a lot of different pages with tons of photos.

By: away for regrooving

away for regrooving — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:23:27 -0800

Professors emeriti are awesome when they just do what the hell they want and when what they want is awesome. I see curls of ice like this in soil, but I haven't ever seen it from a plant stem or similar organics. Maybe I will now that I'm looking! Dr. Carter mentioned Gerhart Wagner for research on fungal involvement. Here's a technical report that makes a pretty good case that "hair ice" (as opposed to "ice flowers" and "needle ice") is related to the presence of a fungus or fungi. A next step in hair ice fungus research might be to inoculate it onto a previously sterilized piece of wood, and see that trigger the production of hair ice... Gerhart Wagner, "Hair Ice on Rotten Wood of Broadleaf Trees – a Biophysical Phenomenon":

Hair-ice or ice-wool formations (Figures 1-6, 11-12, 18) on rotten and wet branches of leaf wood (beech Fagus, oak Quercus, and others) can appear at temperatures slightly below 0C. [...] we distinguish hair ice from related forms, such as ice ribbons or ice flowers (Figure 7), and needle ice (Figure 8). In contrast to ice needles and ribbons, hair ice appears to be related to a special fungus activity. We tested the fungus hypothesis of Wegener (1918), and we succeeded in reproducing hair ice (Figure 15) during many frost nights on beech-wood samples, which had been collected in different forests in Switzerland. Treatments of wood samples by heat (boiling water), alcohol, and most effectively by a fungicide, suppressed the hair-ice formation (Figures 16-17).