Winter Tales
The Season of Mists and Long Shadows
The picture above is a little misleading: we do not often have 'white winter landscapes' in and around Dinefwr.
This part of West Wales is on the eastern edge of one of Europe's largest (remaining) temperate rainforests. Which means prevailing westerly/south-westerly weather patterns bringing air saturated with moisture from the Atlantic.
And that means rain.
Lots of it.
The Winter of 2025/26 was been marked by overcast skies, mists, and rain - with few clear or very cold days.
These were been ideal conditions for atmospheric landscape photographs as well as for mosses and fungi.
There has been an abundance of 'scarlet elf's cup' (Sarcoscypha coccinea) and examples of beard lichen (Usnea florida). The latter is very interesting and deserving of further description...Usnea florida forms a bush of thin branches often ending in flat spore-producing discs and can grow to 10-20 cm long.
This lichen contains potent antibiotics which can halt infection and are broad spectrum and effective against tuberculosis bacteria. This, combined with the hairlike structure of the lichen, means that Usnea lent itself well to treating surface wounds before sterile gauze and modern antibiotics. It is also edible and high in vitamin C. Usnea is extremely sensitive to air pollution and its occurrence is therefore an important indicator of environmental quality.I have included images of these 'stars' in the brief gallery below. All images were take on the Dinefwr estate and there is a link at the end of the gallery that takes you to more images of Dinefwr during the Winter months.
So Dinefwr in the Winter months is usually dominated by mists and rain resulting in an atmospheric, emotive, and often eerie landscape
That change somewhat in January 2025 when we had a few days of significant snowfall - the first in several years.
Click on an image to enter Lightbox and view the pictures as a slideshow.
The Wonder of Hair Ice
Once again, walking Dinefwr on a daily basis has resulted in an absolutely amazing find.
It was January 14th, the weather is still, cold, and foggy. The landscape is beautiful but eerie.
It is around zero degrees Centigrade but, due to recent heavy rains, the ground is soft.
The conditions are perfect for Nature to work a bit of alchemy.
As Bess and I walked through the woods in the shadow of Dinefwr Castle, something white caught my eye. At first I thought that a sheep had got into the woods and left some wool on a broken tree branch (except the sheep around here are definitely not fluffy and white!), or visitors had left yet more litter in the woods.
Neither was true - this was, in fact, one of the miracles of Nature and a very rare occurrence:
I caught a few images. Click an image below to view in Lightbox.
Hair Ice: it is worth presenting the lengthy explanation below the images.
Hair Ice: Nature at Work With Extraordinary Magic
Las Winter, I was witness to one of Nature’s most fleeting and fascinating magic tricks.
In 1918, Alfred Wegener (the scientist who also first proposed the theory of Continental Drift) noticed this weird form of ice whilst walking in the forest (and I do wonder if he too was accompanied by his faithful dog).
Wegener thought that it was more than simple physics creating the delicate ice structure. He suspected that a fungus was involved in the process. However, it took nearly one hundred years before his suspicions were confirmed. Hair Ice became a century-old mystery that baffled some of the smartest minds in science.
In 2015 a team of scientists confirmed that Hair Ice is caused by one specific fungus: Exidiopsis effusa and, yes, I have seen this fungus in Dinefwr's woods. Without this fungus, you just get normal crusty frost, but with it - you get you get Nature's magic.
How does a fungus turn ice into hair?
t is caused by a strange and very delicate process called “ice segregation.”
The fungus is living inside rotting wood, digesting it. The fungus respiration process releases water that also contains complex molecules and these molecules act as a “recrystallisation inhibitor” - effectively, a biological antifreeze.
This prevents the ice crystals from growing and instead, as the water is pushed out of pores in the wood, it freezes into a single, incredibly thin filament (about 0.02mm wide).
As water continues to extrude, the hair grows longer and longer, sometimes reaching several inches. The perfect conditions for finding Hair Ice are very rare. It only grows on dead, rotting wood from broadleaf trees (like Beech or Oak).
The wood needs to be moist and devoid of bark, and the temperature is critical: it needs to be just below freezing (around -1°C to -4°C). Too cold, and the water freezes inside the wood. Too warm, and it doesn’t freeze at all.
The air needs to be humid and finally, the time of day is critical: as soon as the sun hits the Ice Hair, or the air warms up, it melts and vanishes.By 10 a.m., it is usually gone.
Alchemy at Work
Many factors have to be perfect for Hair Ice to Form: the correct biology (the fungus), atmospheric physics (the temperature and humidity), and chemistry (the molecular inhibitor).And then - just as you stumble across it, it is gone.