These delicate fronds and whorls are not decorative etchings, nor have they anything to do with vegetation, despite their biological appearance.
In fact they are nothing more than frozen water — ice crystals which formed on Mail reader Stuart Dent's cars on two frosty nights earlier this month outside his home in Oxfordshire.
The beautiful patterns, called "fern frost", reflect myriad water molecules arranged in six-sided patterns, a deep symmetry governed by the geometry of the molecule itself.
Sometimes nature's palette is richer than that of any artist, as these beautiful and surreal images show.
These delicate fronds and whorls are not decorative etchings, nor have they anything to do with vegetation, despite their biological appearance.
Like a windowpane, the paintwork encourages the growth of long ice crystals, each interlocking with the last, with the overall pattern being dictated by tiny scratches, dust and other imperfections on the surface.
Beautiful though it is, this is nature at her most ephemeral — artwork that disappears shortly after the first rays of sun strike in the morning.
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