Rare ‘Hair Ice’ discovered in Braco Woods by Braco PS Nursery children

On Wednesday 13^th January during a winter walk the nursery children discovered some strange looking frost in Braco Woods. Orlaith asked “is it paper Mrs Russell”, Aidan said “it looks like cotton wool”.

Later that day Mrs Russell came across the answer to our strange discovery on the BBC News website.

National park rangers have found a rare form of ice covering dozens of pieces of dead wood in woodland near Callander. The “hair ice” is a highly unusual type of frost that needs a very particular set of conditions to form. The strange, candy floss look is caused by a fungus called exidiopsis effusa. The action of the fungus is to enable the ice to form very thin hairs – with a diameter of about 0.01mm – and to keep this shape for many hours when temperatures are close to freezing. The ice only appears on wood which has fungus growing in it and there also needs to be exactly the right combination of humidity and temperature.

I explore and discover the interesting features of my local environment to develop an awareness of the world around me SOC 0.07a

I explore and appreciate the wonder of nature within different environments SOC 0.08a

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Recently the children have been drawing their own little portraits, which will be put on our special school tea towel.

These will be on sale shortly and will cost…..

Here is an example of one.