Framed

WILD FLOWER
FINDER

© 2005-2020 R.W. DARLINGTON

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  Last Updated: Yesterday Taxonomy: APGIII 2009   

This resource is for wild flowers occurring in the UK (United Kingdom - which includes England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and several nearby islands but not the rest of the World). It is searchable by colour, month, habitat, number of petals, flower symmetry and all manner of other parameters by which identification of a flower may be narrowed down. Included are thousands of photographs. Plus the structural formulae of hundreds of plant compounds: dyes, herbs, poisons, pharmaceuticals, smells, etc. There is also a wealth of extra information and other resources at hand.

Make sure you stretch the site out horizontally such that you can see the fourth column entitled 'SUBJECT INDEX'. If the site is too wide to fit on your screen, an alternative is to invoke the 'scale view' option present on all good web-browsers, and adjust it to something less than 100%. If not, there is another alternative (although not as easy to use) pull-out Subject Index which you may invoke; which is to be found near the foot of the APP(endix) which can be instigated via the button at the top of the second-column super-selector.

A sub-set of the Wild Flower Finder website can be run on a mobile phone's or PDA's narrow screen just by using the SEARCH function. This is an extremely powerful search function especially suited to searching and helping identify wild flowers in the field on narrower screens. To help you enter the URL, simply photograph the Mobile QR code at the top with your mobile device, possibly into Google (the mobile app) [which accepts images, rather than Google>images which does not]. 'Puffin' is web-browser capable of independent scrolling of frames on mobile phones and tablets; most other mobile web-browsers cannot do this apart from those on the Android phone. Shock Horror: after about 15 years, Apple have suddenly also decided to allow independent scrolling of framed websites on their Safari browser (in 2019). Android phones have had this feature for a very long time!

There is no mobile phone app for this website; it occupies many more MegaBytes than the maximum which can be allocated to any app. And, in any case, any app would not be updated with new things anywhere nearly as often as does this growing website. But you can view any critical index pages separately on a mobile phone, tablet, kindle or PDA from which the reader will be able to access possibly 99% of this website on a small screen.
See Using This Website from a Mobile Device.

A tip for those browsing this website in 4-columns: for links displayed in the 3rd column (the widest column) - if you do not want the page you are viewing to be replaced by that of the link, then in your web-browser select 'view in new window'. Using the web-browser called 'Netsurf' this is accomplished by using the right-most button of a 3-button mouse rather than the left-most button (your Author cannot say what the equivalent action is for the web-browser used by the reader - neither can he know how many buttons the readers mouse has ~). But there will be a way of selecting a link without it replacing the page from which it came - it just might be more complicated on your web-browser than when using Netsurf as the web-browser. Learn to use your web-browsers' capabilities.

The wild flowers which are presented on these pages are growing daily in number due to liberal watering.


All photographs shown with the credit ©RWD are copyright of the author, R.W. Darlington.

All photographs by other contributors are credited with their name and copyright symbol under the photograph in question, plus a personal profile on the contributors page. Anyone can contribute wild flower photographs.

Please show me all the widgets that I can click upon [POP]



FOREWORD by : The Author

Many naturalists seem to be over-concerned about whether or not a 'British wild flower' really is wild and native to this country or was introduced by humans and naturalised. What they often fail to recognise is that many of what they think are true British wild flowers could (and probably were) introduced by man in the past, sometimes in the very far and distant past. Before the ice age, which ended only 12,000 years ago, Britain had as many wild flowers as did Continental Europe. The ice age affected Britain more that Continental Europe; the British glaciers scoured the native land bare of nearly all the wild flowers and other plants. After the ice age, only about a third as many of the 'once native?' wild flowers returned to Britain (or were re-awakened after 160,000 years dormancy in the soil, for that is how long the last ice-age lasted). [It should be noted that some seeds don't even survive just 2 years dormancy in the soil, and any that last as long as 160,000 years are indeed extremely resilient!]

So why all the fuss about introduced plants? Plants have been introduced to Britain by mankind and other creatures for thousands of years; so long ago, in fact, that no one really knows which plants were really native or introduced.

Of course, there have been many very recent and well documented non-native introductions to Britain. Kew Gardens has a lot to answer for. They have imported quite a few plants that are now classified as notoriously invasive weeds (er, sorry, there are no weeds, I meant wild flowers). Japanese Knotweed, once brought over to Wales for its highly praised form, threatens to destroy all other plants in Britain. It is now illegal to grow it intentionally; pity it wasn't so before someone imported it. Japanese Knotweed is virtually in-eradicable, its roots can extend down two metres below ground, and its underground stolons spread horizontally up to 7 metres underground, to appear in next-doors garden. And, if dug up, just a one inch length of any part of the plant that is missed will re-generate. [It can now be treated by cutting the stem off a foot above ground level, slicing downwards through the stem to the root, and then injecting it with a herbicide, but this treatment needs repeating every year for 10 years, and is very labour-intensive. (In the UK all Japanese Knotweed is female, and does not reproduce sexually, but only by vegetative propagation. That does not seem to have hampered its spread; how much faster could it spread if it were sexually active?).

An alternative approach to controlling Japanese Knotweed 'forests' is to infest the area with specialist insects that feed only on Japanese Knotweed. However, this method still needs approval from the authorities on the release of the non-native and jumping plant lice, Aphalara itadori, a Japanese psyllid, into the environment: still pending. These sorts of non-native introductions have always previously led to even greater environmental disasters in unforeseen ways. Such biological interventions often fail miserably to take a holistic view of the whole ecosystem. The old song 'She swallowed the Spider to catch the Fly' springs to mind in this situation]. Trials will establish whether this lice can be safely released into the UK environment to control Japanese Knotweed. But according to BSBI distribution maps, it is already in retreat, occupying fewer hectads than it did the previous decade. Compare the BSBI distribution of Japanese Knotweed in the period between  1987-1999 with that of the decade later  2000-2009, although the difference could just be an artefact caused by the possible under-reporting of a boring, well-known and ubiquitous plant. [By a similar, but inverse token, rare-ish plants might be over-reported].

The author wonders who brought bracken into the country, for the way it is now spreading, can it really have been here once before? That too threatens to 'destroy' much of upland Britain. But what do we mean by destroy: upland Britain is not the same now as it was before the massive deforestation of Britain for firewood by our forebears.

Should we care if a plant is recently introduced or is an ancient relic or is possibly truly native to Britain (whatever that may mean)? For instance, Astrantia is a nice flower upon which to gaze. It was naturalised in Britain as a garden escape relatively recently. But was it one of the European plants that was actually here before the last ice-age but failed to re-colonize Britain naturally after the ice-age? (for 'Astrantia' read 'any so-called 'non-native' plant'). And what of the dozen or so previous ice-ages? These are basic questions, but answers are not easy to determine in the field. Vegetable matter easily decomposes, even seeds which are more resistant, but under the right (natural) conditions, can be preserved as evidence for surprising long durations. Encapsulation in amber results in exceptionally long preservation. In 2012 a mite was discovered which had been encapsulated in amber for 230 million years. And in 2014 a 100 million year old lump of amber preserved the oldest evidence yet for sexual reproduction in a flowering plant (an angiosperm) from the Cretaceous period (though not in the UK). The flower was named Micropetasos burmensis; a new genus and species. But preservation in  amber is a rare occurrence, especially in the UK.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The fact is, with or without human intervention, all lands change over time. With human intervention, it is possible to maintain a land in its present state against the forces of changing environmental factors around it, such as to ultimately preserve the land in a state which is often very far from its normal equilibrium, or at least for a short while. But lose the human intervention factor and the land will quickly revert back to its preferred state, possibly via a number of intermediate steps as various plants vie for domination. But although it may eventually settle into the state that it was in originally, it may just as likely find a new state that it prefers over the original, and settle in that state: the ball at the summit of the mountain may roll into a different valley from which it came. Such are the consequences of taking a land far from equilibrium. That which was fertile could become desert. Once a land is taken out of equilibrium, other factors can come into play, such as increased rainfall, or increased updraught winds leading to erosion or deposition, which can change the character of the top-soil. If that happens, reversion to its original state could be impossible for millennia. Think of the American dust bowl.

Measured globally, as an average, 2017AD was an exceptionally warm year breaking the records set by all previous years since worldwide temperature recording began. In the 4 days around New Years Day 2018, the number of differing species of flower recorded (growing in the UK) was counted as 611. 46% of species recorded were non-native (but not growing in parks or gardens). The flowers were recorded by hundreds of volunteers throughout the UK over the New Year period. The plants recorded were mostly those that were flowering much later in the year than they would normally, or just hanging on; hardly any were found to be spring flowers flowering early. The record breaker for the most species of plants in flower in any one area went to Phillack in Cornwall with 114 recorded (no, your Author has never heard of the place either - although he has visited Cornwall on several occasions).

As global warming takes hold, the temperate regions will warm up, but the polar regions are becoming warmer still. The warm polar air is melting the permafrost and ice-sheet, which when white was reflecting the heat, but when gone are darker and absorb even more heat from solar insolation. This positive feedback mechanism ensures even faster melting of the polar ice and ever higher polar temperatures. This increased temperature differential with latitude is already leading to an increase in wind speeds, as normal meteorological effects try unsuccessfully to restore the ever increasing temperature differential. The consequences for British plants are, that as Britain gets warmer, the plants migrate northwards through the different land regions. This may sound fine; for they have over a thousand miles to travel from Lands End to John o Groats before they run like lemmings into the North Sea. But all regions from South to North are not the same. There are isolated Limestone regions and isolated peat-bog upland reaches, for instance, with each region supplying the needs of particular plant species. Species which grow only on mountains are being forced higher and higher up the mountain and will eventually reach the summit where they can climb no higher. Any particular plant specific to one region could find itself pushed into an incompatible region, and thus die off altogether, or be forced, by natural selection, to change into something that can survive the new conditions. However, natural selection requires millennia to accrue advantage, a timescale not available for plants during rapid global warming.

But, all this and much more has happened many times before in the vast ages of the Earth, and all without human intervention. It is mankind that is now taking the Earth far from equilibrium. If pushed too far, the Earth itself could suddenly switch to a new quite unwelcome state as did Venus billions of years ago. Prior to that, the atmosphere of Venus was quite like that of Earth, but is now swathed in toxic gases at a temperature of about 735 K at an atmospheric pressure of just over 90 times greater than that of Earth, where it is thought nothing can live. (But there are surprise organisms recently found living at great depths below ground on Earth, and very high in the atmosphere - so nothing is certain).

Britain is already changing, and there is virtually nothing that mankind can do about it. Earth is already committed to 150 years' worth of man-induced global warming even if the whole World stopped emitting man-made carbon dioxide tomorrow; such is the global residence time of atmospheric CO2. If we continue to release carbon dioxide at present rates, drastic change could come about much sooner. Against the forces of change, we can try to keep British lands in limbo, in their status quo states, but ultimately this can be disastrous as the land is taken very far from equilibrium, and it could eventually suddenly switch into new preferred states that may not be the state had we left well alone in the first place~

Change is upon us. All we can do is let nature take its own course. Which may result in our own extinction, as well as that of many other lifeforms. Only after much of life on Earth has been extinguished can Earth itself relapse to its former self. But it may just as equally adopt a totally new state, one which may be toxic to oxygen-requiring lifeforms.



ICE-AGES

Ice ages are a relatively new phenomenon on Earth. Before about 2.7 Million Years ago the Earth did not have ice-ages (although the overall temperature of the Earth did fluctuate randomly by 2 or 3 °C over timescales of approximately 30,000 years). But 2.7 My ago the Earth's average temperature dropped by about 3.5°C and started fluctuating cyclically around this new mean temperature by up to 5°C ot an average 41,000 year cycle.

Then, for reasons unknown, about 1million years ago it changed again, this time at an average temperature 5°C below that of the average temperature of 3My ago, with the temperature fluctuating by up to (°C over a longer 100,000 year average cycle. So, the ice ages began 2.7My ago and occurred every 41,000 years until 1Myr ago when the frequency of ice-ages dropped to one every (approximately) 100,000 years with much more extreme temperature excursions. The ice-ages thus got more extreme a million years ago. At the moment we are in an inter-glacial period, with record-breaking high temperatures and it is doubtful if the over-due ice-age will be able to present itself when carbon dioxide is at such record-breaking high values (and increasing bi-yearly) never experienced on Earth before maybe 2.7 Million Years (or more) ago.

 Ice-age


TEMPERATURE EFFECTS

Recent research seems to indicate that, plants, on average, can spread at about 0.7km per year, but because of Global Warming, the advancement of the temperature northwards is progressing at a rate of 1.3km per year. That is, the climate, on average, is spreading northwards faster than the average plant can keep pace. Some will win out, others will be lost, unable to keep up with the advancing climate front. Prof Thomas at York University says that those species (not just plants) closer to the equator, within the equatorial belt, are moving away from the heat at the greater rate of 1.75km per year, which has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue until at least the rest of this century. Shifts to higher altitudes, where it is also cooler, occur at a rate of 12m per decade (2011).

In England, it was reported in 2011, the comma butterfly has moved 220km Northwards from Central England to Edinburgh in just two decades to keep cool. They can also move upwards - however, they can only keep moving upwards until they reach the summit of a hill or mountain, where they can get no higher out of the heat. They then die, or evolve.

Other research indicates that in Southern UK regions, each one degree Centigrade of warming lengthens the growing season by about 3 weeks. It is half that for Northern regions, i.e. about a 10 days longer growing season. In the year 2000, the 30-year-average growing season (for Central UK regions), was 243 days. The 30-year average is increasing by approximately 1.7 days per year since AD 1980 and has increased by about 24 days over the last 30 years. The year to year variation is quite large, varying from about 190 days (about AD 1980) to 308 days (AD 2000). To some plants this means earlier flowering, delayed leaf fall, over-winter flowering, and near continuous growth of lawns (which stop growing only when the temperature falls below 7C). To other plants it could mean two flowering seasons in the same year rather than just one. In the UK, on average, spring is occurring 2 weeks earlier than it did in 1967 and Autumn a week later; it's asymmetric. The average temperature is also experiencing greater warming in the night than during the daylight hours, which has important implications: the cooler nights are when the Earth has a chance to lose heat by infrared radiation, but increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are blocking the escape of the IR. Those plants that are able to vary their flowering times in response to climatic changes are the ones likely to survive whilst less adaptable plants may perish. However, there may be some plants which have been able to do this in the past, flowering earlier and earlier in the year to the extent of now flowering in the depths of Winter only; any more global warming may drive those extinct too since there is no earlier month than January! Such plants have reached the buffer stop.

Satellite imagery of the Earth from space reveals that the rising carbon dioxide levels are making the planet greener with foliage, particularly in the drier areas. But this presumably cannot continue indefinitely, for as temperatures also increase some plants will start to die. The maximum carboxylation efficiency of C4 photosynthesis (typified by grasses and cereal crops) occurs at about 35°C; above and below that temperature it starts to fall. At 40°C the efficiency has dropped to what it was at 21°C, for it decreases faster above 35°C than it does below that temperature. For C3 photosynthetic plants (which includes most plants except grasses and a few others) the temperatures are expected to be about 10°C lower, for they cannot take the heat.

Above a certain temperature, which varies from species to species, the plant shuts down its genetic machinery and stops growing. For plants growing wild in the UK, a typical shut-down temperature is 30C. Tropical plants will have a much higher shut-down temperature, arctic ones probably lower.

Species also have a minimum temperature at which they will grow, which again varies from species to species. For 'lawn' grass (in the UK) it is, as mentioned above, 7C.

Similar to the way that the liquid range of elements varies from element to element (gallium is liquid over a temperature range of 2174°C, whereas mercury only over 395°C, and water just 100°C) some species of plants will have a large range of temperatures over which they will grow, whilst others will have a much smaller range.

GLOBAL PLANT GROWTH RATE NOW FALLING

The rising carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is also reducing the number of pores in the leaves of some plants. The pores are means by which the plant obtains the necessary carbon dioxide, and if there is more carbon dioxide in the air, it needs fewer pores. But the pores unwittingly also allow water vapour to escape, so if a plant can get enough CO2 with fewer pores, the better water retention it has.

Since the late 1990's it has also been found that atmospheric water vapour is declining and caused plant growth rates in some countries to fall. It is the VPD (Vapour Pressure Deficit) which has increased remarkably in many areas of the World. The VPD is the difference in pressure exerted by water vapour compared to the fully saturation pressure. When the VPD increases the pores in the leaves (stomata - which are eye-like slits in the leaves) shut closed not allowing in air which contains the essential carbon dioxide to enter for photosynthesis to work, so photosynthesis is lower when the VPD increases. The shut pores also do not allow oxygen to be released as it is in normal photosynthesis.

The reason that the VPD is increasing is because the winds blowing over the Worlds oceans have decreased, resulting in less water vapour entering the atmosphere and subsequently not blowing over the land as much which is where the plants are. There is a double whammy in place: global air-temperature increases have resulted in the air not being able to hold as much water vapour. [It should also be mentioned that a great deal of water vapour in the atmosphere is also to be found in the rivers in the sky. As wind blows over huge natural forests, the trees transpire putting water vapour into the aire which then forms meandering 'rivers in the sky' of water vapour. These air rivers travel thousands of miles, way beyond the enormous forests that produced them. But with the Amazon forest now being rampantly destroyed, these rivers of water are dying down, and do not transport as much water from tropical areas to other drier parts of the World].

The increased VPD has resulted in a global drop in growth rates of plants and trees. The trees also create a record of their growth rate over the years, as shown by the tree ring width. There has been a decrease in average tree-ring width at more than 100 sites of the 171 sites measured over the World since 1998.


GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY and EXTINCTION THREATS

Out of an approximate 8.7 million total number of species on Earth (of which only a small fraction, about 13%, are known to science), there are 7.77 million species of animals, 611,000 species of fungi, 36,400 species of protozoa, 27,500 species of chromista and 298,000 plants. The 298,000 plants are split into, approximately:

  • 259,000 Flowering Plants (in 2016, Kew counted [in their existing databases] 390,900 flowering plants worldwide (with 2034 new to science discovered in 2015 alone. However, it appears there could be a lot of double-counting because botanists, over the years, appear to have given some plants differing scientific names!).
  • ~60065 Trees (estimated in 2017)
  • of which 1000 are Conifers
  • 13,000 Ferns and Horsetails
  • 15,000 Mosses
  • 10,000 Red & Green Algae
  • [Fungi, of which there are an estimated 611,000, do not come under the plant moniker].
  • [Lichen, perhaps 13,000 - 30,000, no one really knows, but they are not plants either]
In the year 2010, it was estimated that 70% of all these plants are under extinction threat, being either critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable. This is over double the percentage of any other species such as birds (12% under extinction threat), or invertebrates (34% under extinction threat).

In 2010, Kew Gardens predicted that up to 34% of the total world-wide number of plant species is under threat of extinction, primarily in rain forests. This seems to be half the estimated number as reported by others in the same year, 2010, but both are just estimates; no one really knows. (Now, in 2016, Kew estimates that 21% of the 2015 World Wide count of 391,000 plants are at risk of extinction)

The current extinction rate (2011) (of the Worlds whole biodiversity) is already somewhere between 100 fold to 1000 fold higher than the background rate of extinction, so we may already be witnessing the next mass extinction event. Indeed, it has been confirmed that we are in a mass extinction event; by 2100 10% of all species may be extinct (and major extinction events may last much longer than 100 years).

In the UK, it was reported in 2011 that there has been a 97% reduction in the number of wildflower meadows over the last six decades, a tremendous decline (although this is due to policy, rather than natural causes). There are now a total of just 4 square miles of upland wildflower meadows left in the UK. Lowland meadows are in much the same predicament; there are now less than 10,000ha (25,000 acres) left according to Michael Way of Kew Gardens in 2011.

In 2016 conservationists worldwide have counted 4979 species of plants which in some places (mainly not their home countries) are invasive and pose a great threat to biodiversity in the countries they are now growing wild and uncontrolled within.


PAST MASS EXTINCTIONS

It is now thought that the Permian Mass extinction of 251 million years ago, where 95% of all plant species (and 90% of all species on Earth) were made extinct, was caused by a fungus in the soil acting on plants and trees whose health had been severely compromised and weakened by vast volcanic eruptions of that era. The fungi, possibly belonging to the group of fungi called Rhizoctonia some species of which are still extant today, took advantage of plants so weakened by heat stress, drought and acidification brought on by the volcanic eruptions (acid rain, H2SO4). Such an extinction scenario is unique; no other mass extinction can be found in the geological strata where a fungus was involved on such a global scale. It is thought at least plausible that the same thing could happen to plants under the extreme stress of global warming today.

The level of oxygen in the atmosphere 251 Million years ago was higher than it has been since then, so much so that wild fires in vegetation ran rampage around the Globe, burning fiercely in the raised oxygen levels even when damp. This decimated the conifers, cycads and ferns that were rampant at the time. 95 Million years later, (145 million years ago) the flowering plants suddenly recovered, and, growing faster than the competition, the conifers, cycads and ferns, came to dominate the flora. Thus, flowering plants are relatively recent in Earths history, which all began c. 4540 million years ago when the Earth was born.

Another theory has it that the mass extinction was brought on by a microbe belonging to the Methanosarcina Genus. Carbon dioxide levels seemed to have then surged far too quickly to have been emitted by a Siberian volcanic eruption, but instead a methanogenic microbe that required huge amounts of nickel*1 in order to flourish on such a grand scale was able to multiple very quickly in the nickel supplied by the volcanic eruption, and was then able to emit copious amounts of methane into the atmosphere. In the atmosphere the methane would oxidize fairly rapidly to carbon dioxide, giving rise to the high global temperatures and the mass extinction event that we observe as having occurred 251 million years ago. The Methanosarcina microbes are still present on Earth today, and are responsible for most of the biogenic methane still emitted.

Another source of methane is generated, not biologically, but geologically in the subduction zones of deep oceanic trenches, where two tectonic plates on the Earths surface collide, and one sinks beneath the other. The methane is generated in exothermic reactions of serpentinic rocks with sea water. A number of chemical reactions are involved, some liberating hydrogen such as by the reaction of Fayalite, an iron silicate rock, with water:

3Fe2SiO4 + 2H2O → 2Fe3O4 + 3SiO2 + 2H2

Whilst others liberate methane by the action of water and dissolved carbon dioxide on olivine rocks:
18Mg2SiO4 + 6Fe2SiO4 + 26H2O + CO2 → 12Mg3Si2O5 + 4Fe3O4 + CH4

(Some deep-ocean methane gas is also generated by methanogenic organisms).

Many other reactions between sea-water and serpentinic rocks take place, but the point is that the methane released deep underwater is under such enormous pressure that it forms a clathrate compound with water, where the methane is physically trapped within a caged compound consisting typically of 75 water molecules arranged in a cage similar to that of Buckminsterfullerene, C60, the famous 'football-shaped' molecule with 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal faces, although it is more complicated than that for methane hydrate. The resulting compound, typically 4CH4⋅23H2O, is commonly called methane hydrate which is a solid similar to ice when under the enormous pressure deep within an oceanic trench. One cubic metre of methane hydrate traps about 164m3 of methane gas. There it is quite stable and safe if kept at below zero Celsius. However, if the ocean were warmed as would occur in global warming, the methane would be released from its trapping cages. There are enormous sub-sea deposits of methane hydrate; released into the atmosphere the methane is sufficient to raise global temperatures dramatically. Thus releases of methane hydrate deposits result in positive feedback - air and sea temperatures rise releasing ever more methane hydrates. If global temperatures increased sufficiently to release all the methane from the vast deposits of methane hydrate, then global temperatures would soar ever higher. The greenhouse-gas effect of methane is much higher (25x) than that of carbon dioxide. Somewhat fortuitously, the atmospheric residence time of methane is quite short at just 12 years (it is slowly oxidised to carbon dioxide and water) whereas that of Carbon Dioxide can be much longer. (Unlike Methane, Carbon Dioxide does not decrease exponentially in the atmosphere at a constant rate; it's decrease is grossly non-linear - with about half being removed in 5-10 years, 1/3rd remaining over the next ~100yrs after then with 1/5th remaining after 1000yrs). This non-exponential decay behaviour is because sources and sinks of CO2 respond differently to any sudden increase. At the moment the atmospheric concentration of methane is, at 1.82ppm (in the year ad2013 - it has increased from the 1.69ppm measured in ad1987), just over 200 times less than that of the 402ppm (ad2016) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The methane concentration varies with a yearly cycle over a range of about 0.04ppm, usually reaching a minimum about October. Methane is lighter than air and it rises, slowly - it is blown around by the winds. Any methane which reaches the upper atmosphere is oxidized by the ozone up there into carbon dioxide and water (which is the main source of water up at that extreme height).

There are, of course, a great many other sources of methane in the atmosphere with rice paddies, wetlands and ruminants currently discharging over half, the rest being generated by gas production, coal mining releases, termites, biomass burning, landfills and other minor sources. Natural sources currently account for 1/3rd whilst man-influenced sources 2/3rds!

*1 Nickel, of course, can also be supplied in vast quantities world wide by nickel-iron meteorites impacting upon Earth. There are many such meteorite strikes that have been discovered from past impacts, and many more fossil meteorite impact craters are still likely to be discovered, (although if it fell into the sea then discovery is far less likely using current satellite observation techniques). Such meteorite impacts are identifiable from the unique  Widmanstätten patterning of the nickel-iron alloy visible when specially treated. Since the Ni-Fe crystals only grow so large when the molten material is cooled slowly over several million years, an extraterrestrial origin is certain.

TRAIN SPOTTERS

There's a difference between just being a train spotter underlining numbers and names in an Ian Allen book and being a train spotter who wants to understand exactly how each steam locomotive works and all the various ways in which each parameter can adversely affect the others - and the design compromises which led to other designs with better (but sometimes worse) performances and efficiencies.

~ It's the same with flowers and plants ~



The Tree-woven Lands of Middle Earth

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