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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
Hi Folks , today I decided to go with something a little out of the ordinary from my usual type of stuff :-)
my main problem here is 'what is it?'
well I am not entirely certain what type of growth this is classified as , but it somewhat struck me as interesting and kind of pretty so I photoed it...
when trying to research what this may be called I tried names such as Lichen but that gave a definition of a plant that lives off of other plants , moss , but all of the images where green and none of this growth was , so I tried to search rock eating bacteria , and found the name lithotrophic bacteria , which translates as 'rock eating'.
well to get back to the beginning , this is another of the things I saw in the badlands , a place that in some ways is very similar to desert , there are very few plants that grow along the hills in the badlands , cactus and what I think may be sage ( but have not tried to research that plant yet) , also some areas with moss.
the land is simply not fertile , there is soil eroded of the top of the hills that stops in some pockets , and also just makes its way to the valley , then there is a large degree of fertility that makes its way along the river , and then there is nature.
the way that I kind of see it is in the Alberta prairies lies this area of 'bad land' striped down to ancient rock by an ancient flood , and these old rocks sitting next to the fertile prairies are like a vacuum in life , one thing that nature abhors is a vacuum....
this is a world of life , and where things die , or where life has become difficult , nature moves in , to regenerate life. this bacteria is a beginning of that process , a form of life able to ingest and convert inorganic material into organic material , eroding away at the rocks and turning it into soil.
slowly but surely nature will take back this 'bad land' with such bacterial growths , and drought tollerant plants growing and dieing year in and year out , each cycle adding the valuable nutrients to the area.
when this area was formed it was striped down to these rocks , I am sure it did not take long for the river water to make fertile the area around the river , now there are grass lands forming as well , and one day down the road I am sure the entirety of the stark hills will also be reclaimed.
the hills themselves tell the same story . paleontology says that the colored lines of the hills show where the land was dry arid and infertile , and where it was wet lush and fertile , and these lines also show that the land has been back and forth through these conditions a few times...
of course , I am still not a scientist , so this is really just more of the way that I see it :-)
thanks for stopping in.
regards
Art |
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