Swallowed up by the mystery of ‘white stuff’
HERE’S a cracking wildlife mystery for you, as one discovery dominated my day recently on a visit to the coast.
It was something I have never seen before, or to my shame even heard of, a natural phenomenon of remarkable proportions called ‘Snow Mold.’
This picture was taken in a field on the way to a beach well known to me, called Red Haven, in Dumfries and Galloway.
There is a large hollow in the field filled with reeds which often has water in it.
In many previous visits I have just assumed, always dangerous I know, that the pool fluctuated with the water table, so therefore the water was fresh.
On the west coast of Ireland these occasional pools or small lakes are called Turloughs.
In winter, when the underground water table rises and the underground routes are overburdened with water, rainwater will not drain into the ground but start pooling at the surface to create lakes, or turloughs.
Turloughs are very predictable.
They appear and disappear in pretty much the same places year after year, although new turloughs sometimes appear where there weren’t any before.
Depending on the amount of rainfall, turloughs can appear almost instantly, taking as little as an hour to form and disappear in an equally short time.
Sometimes the water disappears through a hole on the floor of the depression, called swallow holes, which can be seen when the lake is dry.
Turloughs form above a limestone geology and, although there is one in Wales, one in Norfolk and three in Northern Ireland, there are none recorded in Scotland.
I could not find an English name for turlough, but ‘mere’ is fairly close, as these damp boggy areas to fluctuate in water level. The mystery deepened. Initially, as I sped past the ‘white stuff’ with the Connie, who knew the beach was close and pulling like a bull, I thought the pools I had seen must have been seawater and the white residue was salt.
You know like the salt Pans in Portugal.
How wrong can you be, especially as I had not factored in that the hollow in the field was too far from the sea.
On closer inspection it was nothing of the sort, but rather a fibrous material with the same properties as hand-made paper. And yes, you could write on it.
I was fascinated by the natural sculptures, galleons, as the ‘paper’ clung to the reed tussocks as the water had receded.
As an idea of texture, please imagine those cheapish lampshades with paper stretched over wire.
As I stood amongst the white landscape, I took a photograph and shared it on Facebook and fortunately a friend suggested what it could be, and as I sat down among the natural art-forms, think galleons and the Eiger, I researched snow mold.
It is found in areas that experience extended periods of snow cover, such as northern North America, Europe and Asia.
These areas cover the cool temperate and boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere.
Turf-grasses that are usually protected and kept moist by snow cover are endangered because of it.
In overcast, rainy conditions between 32 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the pathogen thrives and grows under snow covering wet turf in unfrozen soil.
The pathogen ‘overwinters’ during the summer months.
Then, when exposed to cool temperatures and a wet environment, such as in early spring during snow melt, it forms fruiting bodies known as sporocarps or mycelium and begins to spread.
So far so good and I’m very confident we have the culprit banged to rights, but I challenge readers to Google ‘Snow Mold images,’ and find anything as remotely extensive as this.
So here you go, before this picture hits the Nationals, an exclusive.
I also discovered that this fungi can form if the conditions are suitable without the extended snow cover and that some people are very susceptible to the spore.
There was one reference to ‘ensuring you keep dogs away from it.’
‘Connie, come here!’ I shouted as she was halfway to Australia.