mercedes-fletcher's Favorites

"The Art of Mother Nature".

These images represent the brief but beautiful display we get on the first hard freeze of a winter--if we get such a morning at all at our latitude. We've had a few cold mornings just below freezing in Austin over the past few weeks, but this Arctic blast was enough to keep the temperature in the teens and 20's for several hours. The result for Frostweed is frozen sap which splits the base of the stem and comes curling out in fantasticly beautiful "shaved ice" forms. Botanical icicles. The shapes are as diverse as snowflakes.

NOTE: location is approximate, and the GPS coordinates are not precise. This is a very rare species and should be treated as such. It should be considered highly endangered, despite its entire range being within the designated Eagle Cap Wilderness area, global warming and the resultant climate change being an existential threat to its survival, which is likely dependent on sufficient, reliable, and well-timed snowmelt.

Shell about 10 mm long. Found two on sand under a low intertidal boulder. Very extensible, active, blade-shaped foot and tentaculate mantle covering most of the shell. I don't recall ever seeing this species before, and with that active, white-striped foot, it was eye-catching. The last image shows one of the specimens as found, at the entrance to a burrow of unknown origin, but possibly constructed by Neotrypaea biffari, which are frequent in the boulder field at Naples Point.

The long foot, long tentacles, and mantle covering most of the shell place this little cutie in the Galeommatoidea.

Robin Agarwal (@anudibranchmom) was with me in the field when I spotted these and got a great video clip of one using its foot to move step-wise: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30314434@N06/31128212317