Frost Flowers photo via gardening.bloginky.com
Each Saturday I focus on a different artist that I admire.
From potters to painters, chefs to collectors, seamstress to songwriters, lifestyle to lovers…
anyone who set the paintbrush, pastry brush, hands and heart on fire to create.
Those who inspire art to flow where it may.
"A frost flower is created during autumn or early winter mornings when ice in extremely thin layers is pushed out from the stems of plants or occasionally wood. This extrusion creates wonderful patterns which curl and fold into gorgeous frozen petioles giving this phenomenon both its name and its appearance."
Have you ever seen a frost flower?
"As the temperature reaches freezing, the sap in the stem of the plants will expand. As it does the outer layer of the stem comes under increasing pressure creating microscopically thin cracks, known as linear fissures, begin to form. These finally give way under the pressure of the sap and split open."
Aren't they beautiful.
"Water is continuously being drawn up the plant’s stem while the ground remains unfrozen. It travels up the plants external structural axis, and reaches the split or splits. As it does so, it oozes slowly out and it freezes. Yet more water is coming behind it."
Frost flowers last until the sun's rays touch them.
"This new water reaches the cracks and it too freezes, pushing the previous slither of ice away from the stem. In this manner the amazing ‘petals’ that you see in these pictures are formed."
"The frost flower has a number of other names: you may know them as frost castles, ice castles, ice blossoms, or even the very scientific sounding crystallofolia. Yet the name is something of a misnomer: frost is created by water vapor. Frost flower, on the other hand, are formed from liquid water."
"If you come across one – be careful! Rather than attempt to pick it up, if you have a camera or a phone with you take a picture instead. Frost flowers are incredibly delicate and will more often than not shatter when touched."
"Not only that, as 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."
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