Ice crystal formation on compass plants

There have been a few days lately when the weather brought about lots of large ice crystals on the vegetation at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. Sharp cold nights with early-morning fog seemed to be responsible. Some days it remained cold enough so the crystals hung on most of the day.

The photo above shows Kathie snowshoeing across Toby's Prairie. There were lots of flower stalks here loaded with crystals.

Ice crystals were heavy on most of the remaining flower/seed stalks. In addition, they were really heavy on the compass plant stalks, as the photo here shows.

These crystals hung on almost to noon, but then there was a brief sun in early afternoon which warmed things up enough so that all the crystals completely disappeared.

Getting good pictures turned out to be somewhat of a challenge, since it was a cloudy day and the contrast between the crystals and the flower stems was not very great. Fortunately, Photoshop came to the rescue. This photo of the compass plant stalk has been "tweaked" by fiddling with the brightness and contrast controls.

Another species that showed nice ice crystals was bottle brush grass, which was really loaded, causing the seed heads to droop quite a ways.

Amanda, who has been working on our tree database this winter, has some nice ice crystal photos posted on her Facebook site. Take a look at them.