Hair ice

[1][2] The meteorologist (and discoverer of continental drift) Alfred Wegener described hair ice on wet dead wood in 1918,[3] assuming some specific fungi as the catalyst, a theory mostly confirmed by Gerhart Wagner and Christian Mätzler in 2005.

[4][5][6] In 2015, the fungus Exidiopsis effusa was identified as key to the formation of hair ice.

[1] Hair ice forms on moist, rotting wood from broadleaf trees when temperatures are slightly under 0 °C (32 °F) and the air is humid.

[1] In 2015, German and Swiss scientists identified the fungus Exidiopsis effusa as key to the formation of hair ice.

[1] The fungus shapes the ice into fine hairs through an uncertain mechanism and likely stabilizes it by providing a recrystallization inhibitor similar to antifreeze proteins.