It has been reported in a new study that hair ice arises overnight in woods prior to melting away as a result of sunlight and these have fungal properties. This hair ice that has been found in woods for long time appears to be a very weird thing.

As per reports, tufts of ice crystals appear over rotten logs and leaves. Hair ice is formed in cool and high-latitude woods on humid nights when temperatures are under freezing, and generally it vanishes almost immediately after sunrise.

Alfred Wegener who worked on plate tectonic suggested in 1918 that fungal mycelia, which are the thread-like filaments used by mushrooms to mine nutrients in the soil, could also be there. However, for approximately 100 years, nobody paid attention to that.

At present, a group of Swiss and German scientists thinks that they've found the reason. It is the forest fungus Exidiopsis effuse, according to them.

According to Christian Mätzler, a physicist at University of Bern in Switzerland and co-author on a scientific paper explaining the phenomenon, "When we saw hair ice for the first time on a forest walk, we were surprised by its beauty. We started investigating this phenomenon, at first using simple tests, such as letting hair ice melt in our hands until it melted completely".

Mätzler's co-authors made use of microscopy to identify 11 different species of fungi linked to hair ice-ridden wood samples. However, the only species that was found everywhere was E. effus, and in a number of cases, it was the only one found at all.