One of the native plants we have in abundance is frost weed (Verbesina virginica). It grows in the shade or understory of our wooded areas. In the fall, it has small white flowers and attracts butterflies. Frost weed doesn’t normally have much going for it. I definitely think of it as a weed, but it is native and we don’t try to eradicate it.

Here’s a post I did last year that shows the plant and its flowers.

When it freezes though, you can see where it gets its common name – the plant stems burst open in a beautiful display of nature’s ice sculptures.

Friday morning we had a hard freeze with the temperatures dropping into the mid-20s. The bitter cold was not enjoyable but it gave us a nice treat in the frost weeds.

Frost Weed

Here’s a close up of one of the stalks. This year the ice seems to have burst out mostly in disk shapes and the stacking effect is quite pretty. I’ve seen other shapes, in other years. Sometimes they’re just randomly shaped strings or spikes.

I think the various ice shapes must have to do with the speed of the temperature drop, the atmospheric conditions, the water content in the plant, etc.

Frost Weed Ice Stack

Here’s another clump of them. It’s interesting that the ice disks on the right didn’t merge even though they seem to be touching.

I love the ephemeral aspect of these ice sculptures. They can only happen once per plant stem and they are gone as soon as the temperature goes above freezing. I’m glad I was able to capture these.