English: Poached Egg Stalagmites, Poole's Cavern. This bizarre set of formations is Pooles Caverns one truly unique feature. The alarming looking poached egg stalagmites are the result of human activity on the ground above the cave, combined with natural processes. Several decades of quarrying resulted in huge mounds of lime waste being dumped on the hillside. Rainwater passing through this fine material picks up an unusually large amount of lime. This results in massively accelerated calcite build-up, the largest features here having taken just 400 years to reach their present size.
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