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Show How ICE FLOWERS Are FORMED WINTER weather does not mean the death of ail wild flowers, for when Jack Frost begins turning the leaves brown, there are plants that bloom again down near their roots in queer white blossoms. v The blossoms are phantom-like; low they are visible and then they disappear. Sometimes they arc tied with satiny white ribbons like a bridal bouquet. In the morning they are at their best; but when the sun peeps over the horizon's rim, they fade away before your very eyes. Many of the annual plants with perennial roots "bloom" in this manner during the fall. The thistle and the stumps of the heliotrope, "rock mint," or dittany, flea bane and other plants produce the flowers. Sometimes these fringes of ice form In the cracks of trees, and between the bricks of old sidewalks. They are to be seen on cold frosty mornings when there is plenty of hoar frost but when the earth beneath is not frozen. As a rule they range from one to three inches in length and sometimes thoy grow six inches long. They assume as-sume complex and sometimes very beautiful forms, varying enough to stimulate the imagine tion to find names for them. For some time early-rising scientists argued among themselves as to the real cause of these ice flowers; and several of them held for years that they were formed on the outside of the plant stem just as frost is formed on the window pane by the formation of ice spicules as the result of the deposition of moisture from the surrounding sur-rounding air. Dr. W. W. Coblentz, physicist of the United States Bureau of Standards, who for years has been watching the frost flowers which form on plants, has another theory concerning their origin, ori-gin, Nell Rae Clarke tells in the Scientific American Amer-ican how Dr. Coblentz made detailed experiments to support his belief that the water for the ice flowers comes from the plant itself. He cut a bunch of dried stems of the dittany (Cunila ma-riana) ma-riana) which has a great number of sap tubes in the stalk. He broke them off about four inches in length, peeled the bark off some of them and mounted them in a heavy piece of pasteboard, cemented them in tight, inserted the ends in a glass test tube filled with water and put them out on the window sill on a cold frosty night. He carefully covered the stems with a glass receptacle re-ceptacle to prevent the deposition of moisture from the air. One of the stems had been painted over with a cement which is impervious to water, to keep the water from being drawn up through the sap tubes. It was significant that this stem formed no fringes. On the other hand, the stems which had their lower ends immersed in the water did form beautiful fringes. This was conclusive proof to Dr. Coblentz that ice flowers are formed by water passing through the stems of plants and freezing on the outride. mil f r An Ice Flower, a Phantom-Like Iilossom of Gractiiil Beauty Which Appears at the Roots of Plants and Quickly Vanishes with the Kising Sun. Nnwr-. F-Mrn P-rr1T. l''"0. |