Section 01 of 05
Ground and Deep Time
Rifting, ultramafic rock and what it did to life.
Four entries. Every entry is one thing that exists only here, and the reason it does.
- 01.1
Rift and drift
Grande Terre separated from Gondwana roughly eighty million years ago, and almost everything peculiar about the island follows from how long ago that was.
01.2Ultramafic massifs
Peridotite pushed up over the island's southern third weathers into soil rich in nickel and magnesium and short of everything a plant normally needs.
01.3Nickel and garnierite
The green ore Jules Garnier identified in the 1860s, the mines at Thio that followed, and the red laterite crust the workings expose.
01.4Metal in the sap
Hyperaccumulators such as Pycnandra acuminata carry so much nickel that the latex runs blue-green.