If You Can Believe It, These Are Trees

[goosetown]

Semi-OT, but I thought these pictures were absolutely incredible. At first I saw them without any context and thought they were photos of absurd cloud formations taken from an airplane.

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/arctic-circle-transformed-into-ghostly-world-slideshow/

Anyone know offhand what kind of trees even grow in such an environment? Didn't see it in the picture captions but didn't look too hard either. I assume some kind of pine, but, you know...damn.

 

[Ang3lfir3]

images like this are common in many alpine areas.... after a good snow and a little wind you will find many trees completely covered in snow.... pines, firs, spruce etc ....

always amazing to see ....

 

[rockm]

We even get this here in the east in the higher elevations of the Appalachians. Red spruce and hemlock are the species here. Funny thing is without the snow covering, trees like this can die in the winter, as they grow in extreme sites whipped by the wind.

Dolly Sods Wilderness WV, in spring

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dollysodsflagspruce.jpg

 

[edprocoat]

The images you are looking at have a scientific name describing the process, its called Treesicles ,

ed

 

[milehigh_7]

Wicked cool! Rock is correct however, in the winter you can often see cows with a big ol blanket of snow and ice and it keeps them well insulated.

 

[Hoosteady]

Driving me nuts that I can't remember where I saw this... It was either Nat Geo or Discovery that had a portion of one of their shows on an area that was known for these. Showed whole fields of them. Believe they were likening them to snow monsters walking in the same direction. Might have beeb one of the Planet Earth episodes?

 

[jkd2572]

I saw them today on yahoo news photo galleries. They had not caption and did not say where they are or what they were.

 

[monza]

Pretty common around here. The place where they always have incredible 'snow ghosts,' Whitefish Montana Ski Hill.

http://skiwhitefish.com/shot_of_the_day.php?a=arc&ayear=2012&amonth=2

Not the best shot of them, they progress as winter runs it's course.

(link did not go as planned click bottom second last picture frame)

 

[Vance Wood]

My wife and I went to Alaska a few years ago. We saw the environment where these puppies grow. Most of them are probably White Spruce, Black Spruce and Larch. They grow as tall as the permafrost will allow and do not spread very wide. The snow and ice encases them for most of the winter creating the images in the photo.

 

[bumblebee]

They are in Whoville!

Libby