Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Ice flower is a nickname for a miniature sculpture of ice that forms on only a few kinds of herbaceous plants, only when soil and weather conditions are just right. The temperature must be below freezing for much of the night. Wind must be calm and the sky needs to be clear. That’s a pattern that often creates frost too, but frost is water vapor that forms ice crystals on the outside of objects. For an ice flower, soil must be moist and not frozen. The plant has to be alive and pulling moisture upward from the ground. Water pulled upward in plant roots slowly oozes out of the stem and freezes into ribbons or filaments throughout the night. Autumn is a good time to look for this. Most people wouldn’t notice ice flowers because they look like tissue paper or litter or pieces of cotton left from a harvest. Ice flowers are also called rabbit ice or frost flowers. You might spot ice flowers in the woods, along a stream, or even along the side of a road, parking lot.
Meteorologist Alan Sealls, AMS Fellow
Facebook: AlanSeallsWeather
Twitter: @AlanSealls
Instagram: @AlanSealls
Web: alanseallsauthor.com
Ice flower is a nickname for a miniature sculpture of ice that forms on only a few kinds of herbaceous plants, only when soil and weather conditions are just right. The temperature must be below freezing for much of the night. Wind must be calm and the sky needs to be clear. That’s a pattern that often creates frost too, but frost is water vapor that forms ice crystals on the outside of objects. For an ice flower, soil must be moist and not frozen. The plant has to be alive and pulling moisture upward from the ground. Water pulled upward in plant roots slowly oozes out of the stem and freezes into ribbons or filaments throughout the night. Autumn is a good time to look for this. Most people wouldn’t notice ice flowers because they look like tissue paper or litter or pieces of cotton left from a harvest. Ice flowers are also called rabbit ice or frost flowers. You might spot ice flowers in the woods, along a stream, or even along the side of a road, parking lot.
Meteorologist Alan Sealls, AMS Fellow
Facebook: AlanSeallsWeather
Twitter: @AlanSealls
Instagram: @AlanSealls
Web: alanseallsauthor.com
