Stone Forest Pillars

Stone Forest Pillars is an original illustration set in Southwest China Karst Plateau. It lies in the subtropics, where the climate is monsoon-influenced humid subtropical — dry winters.

Tall freestanding grey limestone pillars rise with sharp vertical solution grooves down their faces. Thinner jagged columns repeat into the distance. Rust-red soil shows in the passages between them, and low broadleaf shrubs grow in the gaps. Everything is still wet from recent rain.

Why are there stone pillars with nothing between them?

These are the same chemistry as any karst, run for far longer under far more rain: dissolution along vertical joints has left pillars standing where the rock between them has gone entirely. The red soil is terra rossa, the insoluble residue left behind after the limestone dissolves. Broadleaf shrubs that keep their leaves, plus rain heavy enough to do this, mark a humid subtropical plateau.

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