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Plants on snow or ice ? The watermelon snow?

Cryophytes

Plants in snow? Do you know the Cryophytes are the organism , specially plants or algae, mosses , fungi and bacteria which can grow on ice or snow in very low temperature.

Those plants are under the genus of Cryophytum. Most of them are algae, diatoms. The algae can be adapted to the freezing temperature. They impart many colours like red, green , yellow to the snow or ice.

The word is the combination of two words- cryo, that means ‘cold ‘or ‘freezing ‘ and phyte, that means’ plant’. So that means any plant that grows on ice or snow or any plant .

These can be shown at mountain peak with snow and at higher altitude with very low temperature. They are responsible for red snow, green snow, violet snow etc. Like chlamydomonas nivalis can be responsible for red snow or watermelon snow etc.another example is Haemococcus nivalis.