h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Right then.. this may or may not be right, but it is what I understand to be correct.

There was a bloke called Avery and he classified soil in the UK into the following big groups:

Brown Earth. This is, as it's name suggests, brown, although some of it can be on the greyey side. This type doesn't usually have any particularly defined horizons, the colour change is gradual. This is fertile land.

Podzols. (My personal fave because I like the name). These are acidic and sometimes have a bleached horizon. They have a zone where iron and aluminium build up. This is not as fertile soil.

Gleys. These are grey/blue in colour, and water affects their structure (they are "hydromorphic"). They're are anaerobic bacteria in this soil and that is why they are the colour they are. These soils can be quite fertile, but they need to be drained.

Peats are made of organic matter which has all accumulated in waterlogged conditions (anaerobic).

Lithomorphic soils are shallow soils which are used mostly for grazing. They have a large bedrock, and the top layer can be eroded easily if mismanaged. Useless for growing crops in.

Moo, you can't imagine how it takes one back to one's geography student days. Podzol is a Russian word and gleys is from the French "glaise" isn't it?

No idea if Podzol is russian or not.

I like to think that Gley is called that so that students can remember it's the greyey blue one

What about redzinas? I know sod all about soil, but seem to remember hearing about it/them fairly often? Are they a subset of one of the four main groups?

Something to do with calcium carbonate in the bedrock/parent material I think, but that's all I know about them, sorry.

rendzina = thin, poorly developed soil with no real horizons (I think) on an alkaline bedrock, usually limestone.
I think it's the 'limestone equivalent' of a ranker (hee hee) which is a thin poorly developed soil with no real horizon definition, on an acidic bedrock. You get rankers all over Scotland & probably Ireland too.

Peat is great stuff. In the group 'histosols'

'Soils in the British Isles@ by Curtis, Courtenay & Trudgill is a good intro to soil, but it's pretty old (about 1978 I think).

Cat x [good luck!]

You're right, moo. "Podzol" is from the Russian /pod/ "under", /zola/ "ash".

Also from Russian is chernozem (a fine-grained loam, rich in humus), from the Russian for "black earth".