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Chesuncook soil was adopted by the Legislature of 1999 as the state soil. It is a soil type that was first identified in Maine and is one of the most widely distributed soil types in Maine. The soil series name comes from the Native American word for converging bodies of water. A lake written about in Henry David Thoreau's "The Maine Woods" also shares the name. Soil is important to Maine's natural resource base. The prosperity of vast forest and wilderness areas depends upon the quality of the soil. Soils are complex "living" systems that provide nutrients to plants and house many organisms. An area's soil type determines the kinds of plants that develop there. The plant life present in turn determines the kinds of animals that make a home in that area. The Maine landscape is reflected in its soil. Sandy beaches contain soil that is nearly all mineral, while farmer's fields contain soil that is almost all organic. The Chesuncook soils formed in dense glacial till derived mainly from slate and are made up of deep, well-drained soils from hills, mountains, and ridges. The soils scientific name is coarse-loamy, mixed, frigid Aquic Haplorthods. Currently, the soil is monitored by the Natural Resource Conservation Service of Maine, which maintains the taxonomic criteria. Tourmaline ranges in color from black or white to vibrant shades of red, green, and blue. The color of the best Maine tourmalines rival tourmaline from world-famous localities in California, Brazil, and the Himalayas. Individual crystals range from opaque to transparent and may be single or multi-colored. There is even a "watermelon" variety with a green outer layer surrounding a pink core. Tourmaline is actually a group of several different minerals which have similar crystal structures, but complex and variable chemical formulas. The exact species of tourmaline is determined by the number of elements present. The most common species in Maine is schorl, a black, iron-bearing tourmaline. The colorful, but less common, species found in Maine is elbaite, named after the island of Elba, Italy. Tourmaline occurs as lustrous, elongate crystals which commonly have a rounded triangular cross section and narrow grooves running parallel to their long direction. The crystals range in size from microscopic to over a foot long. The best examples in Maine are found in a very coarse-grained type of granite called "pegmatite". The slow cooling and solidification of the pegmatite veins allowed the mineral grains to grow to much larger sizes than in ordinary granite. The black tourmaline crystals and many of the brightly colored ones are usually encased in the surrounding rock. However, conditions in some places favored the development of open cavities in which elbaite crystals grew with greater perfection and clarity. These pegmatite "pockets" are the source of Maine's finest gem tourmalines. Pertica quadrifaria is the scientific name of a primitive plant that lived about 390,000,000 years ago during the Devonian Period. Its fossilized remains were discovered in 1968 in the rocks of the Trout Valley Formation in Baxter State Park near Mount Katahdin. Based on the type of rock it is found in today and the other fossils associated with it, Pertica quadrifaria grew in a brackish or freshwater marsh near an active volcano. Fragments of the plants were preserved when they fell into the marsh and were covered by sediment before they could decay. After millions of years of burial, the plant remains are now exposed along eroding stream banks. The Pertica quadrifaria probably reached a maximum height of about six feet, making it the largest land plant at that time (Pertica is a Latin word meaning a "long pole or rod"). Its stem, which measured up to one inch in diameter, had both sterile and fertile branches arranged in four rows which spiraled up the stem (quadrifaria means "in four ranks"). The fertile branches ended in dense clusters of sporangia, or spore cases, while the sterile branches subdivided to form forked tips. These forked ends may represent the first step in the evolution of leaves. Pertica quadrifaria was selected as the Maine State Fossil for several reasons. It was first discovered in Maine. It is also a rare fossil; well-preserved remains of Pertica are found at only three other places in the world besides Maine. |
