Fungi, flowers, fruits & leaves

Bladderwrack (Fucus vesiculosus)

Svartskog, Norway

During normal tides the bladderwrack is in or out of water in regular intervals, but come high pressures and it can be out in the air for days or even weeks.

In summer that means being dried to a crisp in the heat of the sun, but in winter it will be frozen, and that is what is going on right now.

Currently a high pressure is building over Scandinavia, drawing in Siberian air with it. Thus the short days are sunny, but very cold and the nights are double digits below freezing, and with hardly any wind to create waves to soak the stranded bladderwracks they will feel the full force of the freeze.

Sometimes, when the sea is not yet frozen over, this process is very beautiful as they will be lined with delicate frost formed by the fog from the open sea, as seen here. This is what we love to see on land, when the landscape and everything in it is covered in intricate shapes of frost. Only very occasionally this also happens with whatever is growing on the seashore and that makes it all the more special to behold.