If you Google “cinder garden” you’ll likely get lots results for DIY gardens made of cinder blocks. There is also a much more beautiful and natural interpretation of “cinder garden”.
Natural cinder gardens, also called “Devil’s gardens” exemplify resilience and the circle of life. These gardens form as an early step in the reclamation process when lands disrupted by volcanic activity slowly become repopulated with plant life. This is a cinder garden.
Where do cinder gardens come from?
During volcanic eruptions, small clots of molten lava can be thrown into the air. These tiny spurts of lava harden as they sail through the air to form scoria, irregularly shaped, pebble-sized pellets of hardened lava. The accumulation of this pyroclastic material around the volcanic vent forms a cone-shaped structure we associate with volcanoes. The mountain of scoria is what we call a cinder cone.
Environments subjected to catastrophic events that significantly disrupt existing plant and animal life follow a recovery path of plant succession. In this ecological process, plant communities evolve to support more diverse and complex lifeforms gradually over time.
There are two main types of plant succession. Primary succession occurs in cataclysmic events, like volcanic eruptions and glacial retreats, where only barren rock is left behind. Secondary succession occurs after events like floods, wildfires, and extensive logging where the vegetation is significantly disrupted, but the soil base remains intact. Secondary succession progresses much more rapidly than primary succession thanks to the established soil bed that can be more quickly repopulated by neighboring plant species. However, it can take thousands of years for the process of primary plant succession to reclaim lands ravaged by volcanic activity.
What kind of plants grow in cinder gardens?
Initially, only lichens survive on the barren lava flows. These pioneer species begin breaking down rock and fixing nitrogen in minute quantities of soil. Over time, additional small quantities of wind-blown soil accumulate in lava cracks until there is enough to give rise to new forms of plant life.
Next, tiny wildflowers burst with color against the black canvas of a dormant volcano’s cinder cone. These tiny blooms include dwarf buckwheat and dwarf monkey flower. These resilient little blooms thrive in the harsh, nutrient poor volcanic cinder ecosystem. Living amongst chunks of 150° F black lava scoria, these bouquets are remarkably heat resilient. Slowly but surely, the weathering of time and impact of these tiny plants further breaks down the lava to create increasingly hospitable conditions for more diverse plant life.
As the ecosystem progresses, additional flowers like tall western groundsel, silverleaf phacelia, and desert paintbrush gain footing. Eventually the process of plant succession will see the lava fields supporting larger vegetation, like sage brush or even juniper and limber pine trees.
Where can you find cinder gardens?
More than a dozen cinder gardens are found at Craters of the Moon National Monument in southern Idaho. A diverse patchwork of lava flows blankets the landscape, having emerged from the Earth’s core between 15,000 and 2,100 years ago. Because of the variety of volcanic events over time, you can see examples of cinder gardens in various states of plant succession.
In addition to cinder cones, you will find smoother, solidified ribbons of once flowing lava, called Pahoehoe lava. Each rope of cooled lava has its own age, type, and surface texture. These deep grooves are excellent for catching water and accumulating soil deposits to support plant growth through various stages of succession.
Maunaulu in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has a cinder cone from an eruption in 1969-1974. Thanks to the moist climate in Hawaii, the cone is already showing dramatic plant succession. Small shrubs began growing in impacted areas in just 15 years.
The speed of plant succession in a given environment depends on precipitation, temperature, wind, and geological factors. Next time you’re wandering through a volcanic landscape, take a moment to appreciate the remarkable journey of life in these devilishly beautiful gardens.
Where else have you seen cinder gardens? Let me know in the comments!
Learn more
Read all about the geology of southern Idaho in these fantastic book – Geology Underfoot in Southern Idaho and Roadside Geology of Idaho
Learn more about the cinder gardens of Craters of the Moon-
https://www.nps.gov/crmo/learn/nature/plants.htm
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/crmo-ecosystems.htm
What else are you curious about?
I have never heard of cinder gardens!! But I absolutely love National Parks and just put Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho on the list..thinking it would be a good weekend spot on my way to Washington state..thanks for the inspiration
This is an extremely interesting post. I loved learning about the evolution of lava fields. Very well researched and explained.
Never heard of a cinder garden before, this is super informative!!
🌿✨ Beautiful post. I never knew these were called cinder gardens! They’re all so beautiful and I love the variety of plants that thrive here.
I live in New Zealand and we have our fair share of volcanoes. While most have aged and have accumulated nurturing soils, there are plenty of young volcanoes and areas with scoria and lava flows. Thanks for explaining how these type of areas are reclaimed by plant life.
This was a really informative interesting read. I didn’t know about Cinder gardens and I have learnt a lot more about volcanoes too.
It is amazing to me that things do grow in such a place. My husband and I hike a lot in the Rocky Mountains and always see trees or flowers growing out of rocks in the most unusual places.
Thank you for posting this informative post! I learned a lot of new things from this!
What a great article! I hadn’t heard of cinder gardens before.