by tafoni
Susan of phantsythat, who knows my love of rocks, sent me a fascinating link to a pictorial story about tafoni. Oh my, what stunning photos! Tafoni are small cave-like features found in granular rock such as sandstone, granite, and sandy-limestone with rounded entrances and smooth concave walls, often connected, adjacent, and/or networked.
Though the term is new to me, these rock formations are familiar and something I have photographed intensively on Hornby and Gabriola Islands on our BC coast. I became inspired to revisit some of my hundreds of photos, of which a number have been posted here over the years. I have chosen these few from Gabriola Island which I hope haven’t appeared before.
It’s great to now have a name for these formations though I personally have called some ‘rock lace’. If you are interested and perhaps have not seen them before, you may like to visit a few of those older posts, such as:
– rock lace and a great example of tafoni on Hornby Island
– lots of these on the beach at Pilot Bay, and in wall-like formations on Gabriola Island
Oh, and of course, the banner at the top of this site is tafoni!
Thank you, Susan, for thinking of me and my passion for unusual rocks!
May 26, 2014 in Canada and BC, Photoworks, Rocks by Marja-Leena
Amazing. They do look like lace, or bones.
Hattie, yes! Sometimes I have referred to some of them as looking like bones.
Did you note the idea that some them began as spots on the rock previously occupied by crustaceans? When I read that I imagined herds of happy oysters like the ones in Carroll’s poem The Walrus and The Carpenter.
I was and am delighted to have helped solve the mystery. Your photographs of these and the others posted earlier are easily as magnificent enough to have been chosen for the Kuriositas article.
Yes, I recall something like that. Oh, here it is: “some tafoni can be initiated by the action of mollusks – and probably other marine organisms like sea urchins and clams.” Happy Oysters a la Carroll makes me smile.
Thanks, Susan, for your kind words about my images and for the thinking of me with the link!
But aren’t the happy oyster’s appearing in the same poem, what says:” –And why is sea boiling hot?”, which as a question has intrigued me for years. Last summer I started rereading Carroll again, and I think there is big fat Walrus and very thin Carpenter as pictures next to that poem. I might remember wrong, because Carroll’s tales take a reader far way and deep inside things, which are all very possible!
Would oysters eat sandstone? Or just assuming soft little holes for their homes?
Hei Ripsa! I’m sorry I have no answers to your interesting questions. I should reread Carroll too for it’s been decades since…
They are interesting but . . . osteoporosis! Eep!
Rock osteoporosis… hehehe!
‘Tafoni’ is a rather charming name for a fascinating feature too.
Lucy, it is, isn’t it? Too soft for such a hard subject, yet it has a lace-like suggestion.