Monday, June 8, 2009

Green Mystery



These are terrible photos taken in the dark of the woods. Can you see the blue-green coloring to the rotting wood? Its been the biggest mystery of my travels through the woods. I've spotted this on every trail, in little piles, a broken branch. At first I thought the trail-blaze paint might have made the color, but I was dubious of this. Then I thought, some kind of treated wood? Because surely it looks like a copper pigment and copper being a main ingredient in CCA treated wood. But why would there be so much treated wood and why would it be whole branches and twigs? So no to that one.  It looks closest to Copper Phthalocyanine Blue/Green that I use for paint. 

Is it some kind of chemical reaction or algal growth? Anyone know?




3 comments:

  1. Can you check with a State Forest Ranger Office or a local college? I bet they would be willing to help and know exactly what it is. Once we contacted a state forest agency to find out what animal was in our backyard, turned out to be a verrrrry large red fox. That spring we had more, she was pregnant!

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  2. I'll start with the Park Service, although so far the rangers have known little about the woods because their role here is cultural interpretation, not so much trail walkers.

    It's beginning to seem familiar, I've seen this somewhere before...

    After the NPS, a college dept. Yep.

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  3. The right combo of words in a web search delivered...

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