Botryoidal. Here’s your fancy word for the day. It describes a shape like a bunch of grapes. On the very remote chance that you had at some point in your life become distracted on the question of what shape thulium metal take if it can grow under ideal lab conditions, well, wonder no more. It forms into countless little balls one on top of the other and the structure itself becoming a globe like a runaway fractal.

It’s an unusual shape considering that the dendritic form of this metal, branchy and wiry, is so much more familiar to element collectors. Just goes to show you Nature’s always got a wild card up her sleeve!