If you search through my collection after the word “Heide” you will get a list of about a dozen of sands with this name. So what is that and why I have so many samples from the same place? Well, Dresden Heathland (Dresdner Heide in German) is the name of a huge district in the NE of my hometown Dresden, completely covered by forest and representing almost one fifth (1/5) of the entire city’s territory. And yes, that’s really huge, considering that Dresden is the forth biggest city in Germany (after Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne) with a total area of 328 km?, out of which 57 km? represent only the forest Heide.

This brings a major contribution to the green image of the city, one of the greenest in Europe (63% of its area is covered by forests and green places; and we like that a lot).

Dresden Heide offers great hiking routes for fresh-air lovers and we too enjoy it much, the whole year long. But during some of our later walks I have discovered one more aspect, probably unnoticed by the majority of other hikers: despite the typical forest soil, some paths in the forest are totally made of… SAND!!! Without the sand collecting virus in blood maybe I wouldn’t have noticed that either but with my “search-and-collect” status permanently activated, it was just a matter of seconds until the first baggie got fetched out of the rucksack.

This great source of sands dates back over 600 millions years ago in the early Precambrian age when thick layers of sandy deposits covered the region up to 1,500 m depth. Due to immense pressure and temperatures, part of these deposits were being slowly solidified and metamorphosed into granitic rocks (mainly granodiorite and syenite). The intrusive solidification process (below ground) is very slow when compared to the (extrusive) eruptions of lava and it took over 320 millions years for the rocks to show up at the surface, forming the so called today Lausitzer Granodioritplatte (Lausetian granodiorite panel). During the late Ice Age (between 230.000 and 130.000 years ago), the new granodiorite formations were covered with sands brought by the waters from the nearby melting glacier, forming from place to place real sand dunes up to 60 m high (some of them industrially exploited today – see photo below).

But not only the sands were my object of activity in Heide. The soils formed under acidic conditions on the granite beds are infertile and poor for agriculture. In Heide, as typical for most coniferous forests, podsoils constitute the main type of soils encountered, especially on the western side. Due to massive rocks weathering over time, in southern and eastern side one can also find loamy soils and along the Priessnitz river (main river crossing the forest) and the northern side – soils very reach in organic matter.