Frost flowers: how to find ice ribbons on plants at dawn
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Look down this weekend: frost flowers could bloom at your feetIf you love a garden, or just the wild corners of one, here's a reason to set an alarm this weekend and look down. On the first hard freezes of fall, a few native plants push out thin, curling ribbons of ice from their stems. They're called frost flowers. They look like spun sugar, or a curl of lace, and they're usually gone by midmorning. The recipe is short: warm ground, then a sudden hard freeze. The roots are still active, so they keep pulling water up the stem. When the freeze cracks the stem's surface, that water slips out and freezes the moment it meets the cold air. More water behind it pushes the ice outward into ribbons. The Missouri Department of Conservation says scientists still can't explain why only a few species do it. People have been puzzling over it for nearly 200 years. A naturalist wrote about it in an 1828 journal, and University of Texas at Austin researcher Bob Harms calls the ice "crystallofolia," or "ice leaf. "(MORE: Should you water your garden before a freeze?
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