I started watching Wainwright Walks videos by Julia Bradbury, reading from Alfred Wainwright's volumes of Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. That got me to wondering about the terms "fell," "moor," "tarn," etc.
Fell means barren or bare moor hills or mountains above the treeline. In the Blue Ridge in Virginia, you can see a great illustration of the mountains, the lower piedmont (foothills, like the eastern uplands or the Gold Coast hinterland in Queensland), the fall line, the cliff fells, then the coastal plain, all leading to the ocean.
Moor means upland or highland grasslands that have acidic soil. In the UK, moorlands are covered with peat. In Scotland, moors may be called heaths - covered with shrubs of heath, heather, or gorse.
Heath means shrubby lowlands; or evergreen flowering shrubs, like Broom, or heather, which is a genus in the Heath family.
A tor is an outcrop or bare rock formation at the top of a hill or mountain, like Flag Rock on top of Warm Springs Mountain in VA.
A tarn is a lake or pond, specifically a mountain lake or pool formed by a small glacier called a cirque or corrie. Tarns are in a bowl surrounded by cliffs on 3 sides and the 4th a morraine that makes the lip or threshold or sill and that consists of glacial till. We have lots of morraines in Michigan.
A kettle, in contrast to a tarn, is a lake or hole or pothole formed by a leftover piece of glacial ice that melted in a plain. Lots of kettle holes in Michigan.
No comments:
Post a Comment