Flash tubes (Battenberg)

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The flash tubes (detail)

The lightning tubes in the local community of Battenberg in Leiningerland ( Rhineland-Palatinate ) belonging to the Palatinate region are classified as a natural monument under the list number ND-7332-480 . They got their name because their origin was initially traced back to the impact of lightning . Scientific studies have refuted this assumption, however, so that the geological rarity is now considered a mineralogical phenomenon that goes back to sintering and erosion .

geography

The sandstone wall with the lightning tubes lies on the western shoulder of the Upper Rhine Graben below the Battenberg castle ruins on the southern slope of the castle hill; Immediately next to it, the county road  30 runs in serpentines upwards as the entrance to the village. The ocher-colored sandstone wall is several meters high. The Haardtrand - Im Baumgarten nature reserve connects to the eastern slope of the Burgberg .

geology

detail

During the Tertiary , sediments were deposited in the area of ​​today's Upper Rhine , which then solidified. When the former seabed gradually rose when the Upper Rhine Rift collapsed , the sandstone of Battenberg was exposed to the south by erosion about 32 million years ago. It is criss-crossed by tubular iron rinds, the interior of which is filled with loose red to brown sand.

Contrary to previous assumptions, it is not a question of traces of melting caused by lightning , which are called fulgurites , but rather the precipitation and sintering of silicic acid iron solutions that only acted on the sand a long time after it was deposited. A rock sample is exhibited in the Palatinate Museum for Natural History in the nearby district town of Bad Dürkheim . The lettering on the showcase explains how it came about:

“Water that had dissolved ferrous substances penetrated the layers of sand. The iron carried along was excreted in the form of a shell (concentrically) and transformed the loose sand in the area of ​​the deposit into a solid sandstone that can contain up to 30 percent iron. "

The flash tubes were designated as a natural monument shortly after the Second World War .

biology

The loose material in the south-facing steep wall offers a biotope for numerous types of heat-loving insects , such as B. for solitary wild bees and digger wasps ; Ant lions build their funnel-shaped pitfalls in horizontal, sandy spots . Some clumps of the hairy awl grass grow on the edges of the rock . In the neighboring nature reserve Haardtrand - Im Baumgarten , which was established in the 1990s, the fence spikes and smooth snakes that occur there are considered to be key species .

Web links

Commons : Flash tubes  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Landscape information system of the Rhineland-Palatinate nature conservation administration. Nature Conservation Administration Rhineland-Palatinate, accessed on October 11, 2013 .
  2. ↑ a b local community Battenberg - natural monument "Blitzröhren". (No longer available online.) Bad Dürkheim district , archived from the original on October 16, 2013 ; Retrieved October 14, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kreis-bad-duerkheim.de
  3. ↑ Worth seeing. battenberg-weinstrasse.de, accessed on October 18, 2010 .
  4. ↑ Haardtrand - In the tree garden. (PDF; 1.7 MB) (No longer available online.) In: NSG-Album. State Office for the Environment, Water Management and Trade Inspection, archived from the original on May 21, 2014 ; Retrieved November 27, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.luwg.rlp.de
  5. ↑ a b c The "flash tubes". (No longer available online.) Palatinate Museum for Natural History , Bad Dürkheim, archived from the original on September 23, 2007 ; Retrieved October 18, 2010 .
  6. ↑ a b c Like rusty branches in the sandstone . In: Bad Dürkheim district administration (ed.): DÜW-Journal . The magazine of the Bad Dürkheim district. 5/2013, October / November, p. 23 .

Coordinates: 49 ° 31 '54.3 "  N , 8 ° 8' 41.2"  E