Reawakening at very early spring

Morning mist

Forest in the morning, tree stems covered by a foggy most, borderless steam wraps slowly rising in the air and disappearing there tracelessly.

Forests as moisture reservoir, being released in the morning due to the awakening warmth. Morning mist is nothing else than a fog, only some meters over the ground. Consisting like each fog of numerous water bodies in gas conditions, which condensate due to the cold night and seem to have springled all plants and even insects and other sleeping animals with tiny water drops.

Especially in arid environments, that morning mist watering is most wanted and essential for surviving.

With the rising sun, warmth moves the misty clouds up, where they cover the forests in a mysterious light, before the fog disappears.

Sunlight

Consisting of all rainbow colors, each color of the spectrum being defined by a specific wave length. But sunlight also consists of physical components, particles, called solar wind.
Light as essential source for life on earth, sunlight as energizer, basis for the production of oxygen. Warmer sun beams as reawakener of a sleeping forest.

Blooming

They bloom most early in the year, do not avoid to attract early insects inmidst of snow layers: snowdrops, winter aconites and crocuses.

Snowdrops (genus Galanthus) generate thermal energy due to the absorption of sunlight. This energy is essential for growth processes in cold environments.

Winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) have their blossoms only opened in the sunlight. Blossoms are closed over night. Opening and closing are temperature dependent growth processes. The blossoms themselves are resistant against cold. When temperatures rise to 10 – 12 degrees, first honey bee visits can be observed.

In crocuses (genus Crocus) blooming depends on the availability of moisture and warmth. Some species bloom in autumn, others in the late winter period.

All early blooming plants save nutrients as energy resources in tubers or bulbs.

Blue hour

When the sun disappears behind the horizon, an explosion of colors in red or yellowish cover the sky. In fact indicating the end of a day, in some cultures even officially a new day was dawning, when the sun disappeared, such as in Judaism, Islam or ancient Germanic peoples.

Saying „the sun is setting“ is a relict of a geocentric model of perspective. Not the sun is moving, but the observer.

When the sun is far enough underneath the horizon, the blue light spectrum dominates and creates a shiny blue sky, forming a photogenic contrast to the silhouettes of trees and landscape structures.

Moon

The only recent Trabant of our earth, presumably sirvivor of two or even several natural earth satellites in early times of our solar system.

Reflecting sunlight at night, lightening up the sky in the dark. Orientation aid for nocturnal animals, especially insects. Rhythm generator for the reproduction periods of numerous organisms.

The only extraterrestrial body that was so far ever visited by human beings. The first, which might be colonized before Mars.

All copyrights Stefan F. Wirth, Berlin March 2021

The details about snow

Misty

In former times, when people lived in a mystic world, where elves, dwarfs, leprechauns and talking wolves did their dreadful state of affairs in the midst of dark and impenetrable huge forests, people thought that even the old trees in the woods had their own thoughts.

Park Rehberge in Berlin

Uncontrollable, sounds, the snorting of the deer, a mysterious hidden, permanently changing shades in a cold and misty twilight.

Biology

A forest is only then a forest, when a high concentration of trees is given. Woods bear a great number of species, produce a majority of oxygen in our world; they are huge reservoirs of water and stabilize the ground with their tangles of roots.

Snow

Snow consists of ice crystals. Their formation within clouds depends on the presence of ice nucleating particles and temperatures lower – 12°C.

Crystals possess a hexagonal symmetry, being prism-shaped at lower temperatures and dendrite-shaped at higher temperatures.

Temperate deciduous forests hibernate without functional leaves. Most trees throw off all leaves already in autumn to be protected from desiccation in winter frost periods.

Layers of snow are excellent thermal conductors and additionally protect all life underneath from frost damages in the cold season.

Waiting for the spring time

Most life forms hibernate together with their leafless trees. Especially accumulations of deadwood contain remarkable numbers of species, such as insects, spiders, mites or nematodes. Some already begin under their snow cover to prepare themselves for the warmer season.

When all snow is gone, winter colors in red, yellow, brown and some green reappear. Early blossoming plants are already germinating.

What happens with our trees in Winter? A forest area of the naturerefuge Teufelsberg Berlin in air-view

The Berlin forest Grunewald in winter, shown from the area of the urban nature refuge Teufelsberg. The colors, brownish and grey with a little bit of green, dominate the winter landscape. This has biological reasons: Trees of a forest drop their leaves during the autumn-period. This happens in order to reduce water loss due to evaporation. Before they fall, leaves change their colors, sometimes into powerful red or yellow forms.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq9z41zFlvP/

Why do trees drop their leaves?

 

Chemically, the plant modifies chlorophyll into colorless components. Proteins (result of photosynthesis) out of these chlorophylls are resorbed by the plant (tree) in order to save nutrients for the cold season. Carotinoids then retain inside the leaves and appear in red or yellow shades. In winter, most trees are completely leafless and remind to skeletons, waiting for the next warm period.

Leafless trees in winter at nature refuge area Teufelsberg in Berlin, copyrights Stefan F. Wirth. Please like my videos also on youtube, in case you like them.

 

The Teufelsberg area in Berlin, a nature and  sports refuge

 

The Teufelsberg represents the second biggest mountain inside Berlin/Germany. It consists of rubble from the Second World War and extends about 80 m out of the plain around. It is named after a lake, which is located very nearby: the Teufelssee. The Teufelsberg is part of the „Grunewald“, an urban forest in the west of Berlin. Since 1950 the area was filled up with rubble from the city of Berlin, which was almost completely bombed down during the second World War.

Until 1972 about a third of all rubble from bombed buildings in Berlin were transported to the top of this mountain. After 1970 finally, the Teufelsberg was formed into a nature and free time area. Skiing and mountainbiking for example were enabled.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BrMY_BdFlgF/

Kites, US-listening-station and drone footage

 

Today, also during the summer, people use the winds on the top of the mountain to fly kites. Since the late 1950s during the Cold War a listening station was built close to the Teufelsberg, which still exists as a ruin. The footage was captured with a drone (Dji Mavic Pro).

https://www.instagram.com/p/BrE-c04lAnl/

 

Copyrights Stefan F. Wirth, Berlin December 2018.