The Polish Forest The place the Bushes Have Turned to Stone

Although not within the mountains, close to the seaside, or within the lake district, the jap Polish area of Roztocze remains to be magically wondrous. One of many predominant causes is that the forests within the area are stunning and unusually monumental. Fairly actually, actually, as bushes become monuments as they petrified.

The petrified bushes had already caught the general public’s consideration by the fifteenth century. Jan Długosz, a Polish geographer and annalist, talked about that the pine bushes within the villages of Hrebenne, Prusie, and Potylicz have a sure distinctive high quality. “If any of their components, even a department or different piece, is lower or damaged, or even when the entire tree is lower down, it turns to flint inside a number of years,” he wrote.

Effectively, good attempt, however not fairly. In reality, the bushes will not be right this moment’s pines however cypress bushes that used to develop round Hrebenne some 12 to 16 million years in the past. Opposite to Poland’s different miraculous forest – the Crooked Forest in Gryfino, the origin of this stone forest is sort of clear.

Siedliska: the place wooden turns to stone

It presently begins within the village of Siedliska, the place one can start with a go to to the regional museum. Spanning throughout a valley of virtually one thousand sq. kilometers, this geologic web site is likely one of the largest on this planet, in contrast solely to Arizona, Argentina, and the Greek Island of Lesbos. Tens of millions of years in the past, the bushes have been damaged and coated with volcanic ashes and sizzling water. The bushes would hole out with no entry to oxygen, and the tougher components soaked with silica would render a stone. Related bushes to these petrified in Poland now develop within the swamps of Florida.

A go to to the Stone Forest of Siedliska ought to solely begin in its Village Museum. Afterward, you possibly can proceed by way of the tutorial path already accessible for vacationers. A geopark is deliberate within the southeast Roztocze area, which ought to open to vacationers within the close to future. That’s as a result of there’s a lot extra to the geology of this area than simply the bushes.

Tens of millions of years of terraforming resulted within the distinctive risk of following the historical past of Earth’s creation. Fossilized stays of various vegetation and animals are simply cherries on high of it. However the stone forest is exclusive. In spite of everything, opposite to some beliefs, it wasn’t grown in a day.