Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1939-06-03
Of Stors, Men -.
And Atoms
Notebook of Science Progress
In Field, Laboratory
And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.

And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.
Plants that grow in ice and snow-a
phenomenon known to botanists as
cryovegetation-were the special object
of study Of Ersebet Kol, Hungarian bot
anist, who worked in the Mount McKin-
ley National Park, Alaska, last summer,
under a special grant from the Smith
sonian Institution.
They are responsible for the strange
phenomenon Of ice-bloom. Ice fields at
various seasons take on strange colors.
The plants, of course, are very minute
and primitive members of the almost uni
versal algae family which are among
the most primitive forms of life on earth.
They are able to extract the nourish-
ment they require from the surface of a
glacier as it melts slightly under the
glare of the Arctic sun.
The phenomenon has been reported
by Arctic explorers for many years, but,
until DR.. Kols work, very little was
known of the peculiar micro organisms
responsible for it. They are striking
demonstration of the fact that life has
spread to all possible habitats on earth
in some form or other, even to fields Of
solid ice.
While nobody is likely to stake out q
few thousand acres OF glacier for farm,
the Hungarian botanist made careful
cfItIioc nf ho conditions xxrni
the minute plant organisms could live
and multiply, including the acidity Of
the ice.
DR.. Kol is holder Of the Fellowship
Crusade International of the American
Association of University Women. The
work in Alaska was specially financed by
the Smithsonian.
Concerning the Columbia Glacier, one
of the largest Of the Alaska ice fields, DR..
Kol says when I stepped on the ice I
saw for the first time phenomenon to
be seen only on coastal glaciers. The
surface of the ice was covered for miles
and miles with light brownish purple
algae vegetation called ice-bloom This
effect is produced by immense quantities
of minute plants called ancyclonema, a
characteristic plant of the permanent
ice. 1t can never be found elsewhere,
even on permanent snow 1t belongs
to the green algae first found on the
coast glaciers of Greenland. Since that
time the micro-organism have been
found in several localities in Europe, and
I have found it occasionally on glaciers
of the interior, but never in sufficient
quantities to form the ice-bloom of the
coastal glaciers.
Here I had an opportunity of study
ing another striking phenomenon of the
permanent snow regions of Alaska-col-
ored snow, especially red snow Above
Valdez, around the Thompson Pass, the
snoWfelds glitter with a reddish color in
the beginning of August. The snow was
red not only on the surface, but also to
depth of several inches. In one place
it was red even to a depth of feet,
caused by the presence of millions of tiny
plants, chlamydomonas nivalis. The
snow on Thompson Pass looks as though
it had been sprinkled with red pepper,
differing in this respect from the red of
other snowfields, which is usually light
raspberry red
THE life of the micro-organisms is
not yet precisely known. Heretofore it
has been necessary to conduct investiga
tons in the field, as these organisms
could not be cultivated in laboratories.
Field work in the regions of permanent
snow and ice is greatly handicapped by
the difficulty of transporting the neces-
sary apparatus. However, high noun
tain laboratory has been built in Switzer-
land on the Jungfrau Pass, 1882 feet
high, which is very helpful to research
on cryovegetation. 1t would be neces-
sary to build many more such labora-
tories in the vicinity of permanent ice
and snow in order to carry on continu-
Gus study of life under such extreme
conditions.
THE snoWfelds Of the mountain above
Juneau are very interesting biologically.
Here for the first time I saw masses Of
tiny snow f1eas. The surface of the snow
was gray. The f1eas were piled up about
half an inch deep and were rushing
about like bees in the hive. The whole
mass was of deep gray-violet color"
Dr. Kol brought back with him a large
collection of the snow algae in small
bottles preserved with formalin. These
he expects to study at leisure.
In the same explorations report
growth of plants in light reduced as
nearly as possible to single wave length
is described by DR.. Charles G. Abbot,
secretary of the institution.
The experiment was conducted with
peas at the Carnegie of Washington OBJ
servatory on Mount Wilson, Calf. Actu-
ally it was impossible to get closer than
a narrow band of radiation in the blue
band of the spectrum. Peas grew in
these nearly monochromatic rays for
many weeks until they had reached a
height of nearly foot.
1t was hoped that blossoms would
appear, but the experiment had to be
closed before the plants were quite ready
to bloom. Checks were made in ordi-
nary daylight of about the same inten-
sity. The check plants were little more
robust, but the continued growth of the
plants in monochromatic rays was a sur