Country diary: The frosts are no match for this ancient survivor | Susie White

Allendale, Northumberland: These strange, alien blobs are nostoc, and they are doing well in the valley at the moment, when little else isAfter several nights of -7C here in this north Pennine valley, the trees are leafless, the thistles, docks and other wild plants collapsed and frost-browned. The following thaw has made the earth sticky and heavy, and my boots collect mud as I walk. My way leads past an old farmhouse, its gravel drive made of large chunks of whinstone, grey and hardwearing. With the wet, the trod path has erupted with alien shapes like congealed lumps of glue. This curious life form, neither fungus nor algae, is Nostoc commune.A form of cyanobacteria, nostoc retreats into dormancy in dry conditions, shrivelling to a dark, crusty, dead-looking mat, and can stay like this for long periods. Revived when wet, it swells into a bumpy gelatinous mass. No wonder that it was given names evoking the mystery of its origins: star jelly, witches' butter, mare's eggs, spit of moon, fallen star. Continue reading...