Hair Ice

Day 141: Over the course of these posts, I have shown my readers rare plants and fungi, but how about a rare ice? Hair ice occurs only in a narrow window of coinciding events which include temperature, humidity, latitude, type of wood (deciduous) and degree of its decay, and...are you ready for the punch line?...a fungus called Exidiopsis effusa. That's right. Without the fungus, hair ice does not form. The precise mechanism of the fungus' role is not understood, but it has been suggested that it may provide a natural antifreeze which stabilizes the formation of ice crystals. It has been noted that the ice "hairs" form at the openings of medullary rays (a cellular structure formed in active cambium, perpendicular to the growth rings of the plant). The "hairs" are also similar in diameter to the medullary rays (roughly 0.02 mm).

I encountered hair ice for the first time this year about a month ago, and found myself in something of a pickle when my camera battery went dead. Oh, I was ready for that. I had the spare in my kit. However, I was soon to discover that I had apparently forgotten to put it on the charger as I usually do. Hair ice all around me, I had not one but two dead batteries! Since that day, I have been waiting for the right conditions to occur again, and with my second cup of coffee still settling under my belt, I geared up and headed out for Big Bridge, fairly sure I was going on a wild goose chase. Indeed, when I got to the site where I had seen the hair ice previously, my prospects looked pretty bleak. Still, I made a foray into the brush to hunt for it and found one small cluster just as I was about to give up the search. That inspired me to push deeper through the tangled salmonberry vines where I was rewarded with this classic curled specimen. As I knelt to photograph it, the first rays of sun touched the leaves beside it. Had I been half an hour later, it would have been gone.