Frosted Miscanthus seed heads

Small Changes

Posted on by Ann Mackay

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A lot of changes in the garden take place slowly, sometimes without being noticed until they’re complete. But frost, and the way it changes to semi-frozen beads before melting into glistening droplets has been a very visible feature here recently.

The top photograph shows the process of the thaw caught mid-way. There’s still an icy ridge of frost crystals running along the seed head, but below it the sun has melted the rest. It was the first time that I’ve photographed these Miscanthus seed heads – the frost added something extra to give interest to the image. (And they do tend to blow around in any breeze, so very still weather is needed for a decent photo.)

Frosted Miscanthus seed heads
The Miscanthus seed heads were at their frostiest for this photograph.

You can see the seed head at its most frost-covered in the image above. It didn’t stay that way for long because the Miscanthus is growing in the area that gets the first sun of the morning. Any frost on this grass melts away very quickly. It’s only because we had several days of very low temperatures that there was this build-up of frost crystals.

Those frost crystals soon thawed in the sun and became the icy little drops that are seen in the photo below. But this wasn’t the only change taking place as I photographed the Miscanthus. I was surprised to see how quickly the hairs on the individual grass seeds fluffed out in the sun. (You can see how dry and airy-looking they’ve become in a very short space of time.)

I suppose the seeds must be programmed to wait until there’s some warmth before opening out their hairs and getting ready to fly away in the wind. Later on, when it was cooler, I noticed that they had closed up again. Since that morning, I’ve seen the fluffiness appear in the sunshine and disappear as the hairs close when it’s cold. Perhaps this is a way of protecting the seed-hairs in bad weather, so that they don’t get bedraggled, and allowing them to stay dry enough to let the seeds float away when the time is right. It’s an intriguing little change that had gone unnoticed here before.

Here the Miscanthus seed heads have suddenly opened up and become fluffy.
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Published by Ann Mackay

Photographer, mixed-media art adventurer and completely daft about plants.......

15 thoughts on “Small Changes”

      1. I have a few Bidens flowers now and they’re wonderful, they stay open no matter what. Yesterday was cloudy, very rainy, and cold. The flowers that are already open, stay open – they don’t shut up shop! I’m such a fan!

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  3. I enjoyed seeing the bits of blue sky reflected in the droplets in the first photo. Even some of the crystals near the top of the image had captured a touch of blue, and a little iridescence. What you said about the seed heads opening and closing makes sense. I’m sure I’ve read about at least one flower that closes in rain to protect its pollen, but I can’t remember now what it was. The fluffiness in the last photo certainly is attractive.

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    1. The weather has changed totally, being milder but very wet and windy, so those heads are firmly closed again…it will be interesting to see when they open up again. It’s probably a way of protecting the fluffy hairs from getting too wet to do their job. (I lost the internet earlier today – possibly a problem somewhere caused by storm damage further north? I don’t know, but it’s back now, so at last I’ve been able to see and approve comments.)

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      1. I read something very interesting this morning. The jet stream that contributed to our snow, and that a friend in South Carolina experienced, moved right across the Atlantic and is responsible for the bad weather in Ireland. Surely that’s the same system affecting you; we’re sharing weather!

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      2. Yes, the jet stream brought Storm Eowyn to the UK and caused damage further west and north. Here we now have some pretty strong winds, but nothing like the storm, which luckily didn’t come this far south. I wondered if it might have damaged something somewhere that put our internet out. I’m happy to be connected again!

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    1. Nature is generous to the observer and my garden is a very convenient place for keeping watch on small changes and little details. Coffee available quickly afterwards on a frosty day too – what more could I possibly want, hehe!

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