Stone Seven is a small tumble-polished dendritic stone found on Birdlings Flat, just south of Banks Peninsula in Canterbury, sometime over the past couple of years. I was initially attracted to its cream colour with the additional black and brown lines and patches. It was only when working with the close-up images for this Post that I noticed the tiny fine dendrites in the stone.
The word “dendrite” is from the Greek word for “tree”, referring to the branching character of dendrites. In geology, dendrites are thin, branching crystals, often of some variety of manganese oxide (or iron), that grow over a surface in a rock or mineral. They are found in cracks or along bedding planes. Dendrites often look like fossil plant leaves but are, in fact, mineral crystals that form along a weakness in the rock as moisture moves through it. The brown dendrites in this stone, that have formed along fine black-coloured cracks, are not as sharp and clear as they often are in a stone, here appearing more fuzzy and diffuse.
On the seventh day of National Lockdown in New Zealand, daily cases of the delta Covid-19 variant were 41, having been 35 yesterday. That means there are currently 148 total cases in this outbreak. Daily cases should peak within the next three or four days, if the national strategy works. At present, the signs are good, with cases occurring in only two cities, 137 in Auckland and 11 in Wellington, although close contacts of cases are spread across the country. Eight people are in hospital with Covid-19, none in Intensive Care. Lots of testing is going on, contact tracing is proceeding, and the vaccination programme has sped up. Yesterday, the decision was made to extend the National Lockdown – Auckland will remain in Lockdown until at least the end of Tuesday 31 August (two weeks after the first case was identified) while the rest of the country will be in Lockdown until at least the end of Friday 27 August, with reviews to be undertaken just prior to these dates in the light of what happens in the outbreak.
Stone of the Day #8 is here.
Stone of the Week, Week One, is here.
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