The Society of Reflective Personalities - Suberinite

The Frontier Colonel

Personality:
The Frontier Colonel was assigned to the outer limit, the sealed surface, the defensive line between what must remain inside and what was absolutely not invited in.

Its orders were simple: Seal. Protect. Resist.

Suberinite found this refreshingly clear.

Under Suberinite’s command, the Perimeter Unit took position. Corpogelinite held formation. The boundary was secured. The system was protected. Nothing unnecessary was allowed through.

The Colonel did not consider this heroic. It was simply doing what it was meant to do. It was its job.

A good frontier does not abandon itself simply because conditions change. A serious officer does not leave a post merely because the organism is gone, the tissue has collapsed, and the coal has started becoming something else.

In Suberinite’s professional assessment, a boundary remains a boundary until someone with proper authority says otherwise.

And if no such order has been received, the post remains occupied.

Even when time goes by and the Colonel loses the fluorescence of its youth, it can still hold The Unit together. The uniform fades. The hair turns white. The optical character changes. But the posture remains.

Suberinite may no longer look like the officer who first took command of the boundary. In some cases, it stands there with the appearance of something more inert, surrounding altered gels like an old soldier still guarding a post that everyone else forgot existed.

But the Colonel remembers.

It holds the line.

And if the line has not needed defending for a very long time, that is merely evidence that the system was working.

Scientist’s Note:
Suberinite is a maceral of the liptinite group derived from suberized cell walls, particularly from cork tissue and the periderm of bark. In polished section, it may show a cellular structure, commonly with rectangular, brick-like, or irregular polygonal cells, depending on the orientation of the section. It can occur together with corpohuminite/corpogelinite within cork cells, and when the cells are empty and compressed, it may appear as a laminar mass.

In reflected white light, suberinite is usually almost black to dark grey or medium grey, depending on the degree of coalification. Under fluorescence, it may show colours ranging from bright yellow to yellow-orange or brown under blue-light excitation. These colours depend on the degree of coalification and botanical origin.

Suberinite is hydrogen-rich and originates from suberin, the resistant polymer associated with cork tissues. During coalification, its optical properties change relatively early compared with several other liptinite macerals. Its reflectance converges with that of vitrinite at a lower rank than many other liptinites, and its fluorescence may fade or disappear faster than other liptinites. In some cases, suberinite-like structures may still be recognised morphologically, even when their optical properties no longer behave like typical low-rank liptinite being similar to inertinite macerals properties. Some petrographers may differentiate them as meta-suberinite.

Scientist’s note based on:

Pickel, W., Kus, J., Flores, D., Kalaizidis, S., Christanis, K., Cardott, B.J., Misz-Kennan, M., Rodrigues, S., Hentschel, A., Hamor-Vido, M., Crosdale, P., Wagner, N., ICCP, 2017. Classification of liptinite – ICCP System 1994. International Journal of Coal Geology 169, 40–61.

Some examples of descriptions of meta-liptinite:

Hower, J.C., O’Keefe, J.M.K., Valentim, B., Guedes, A., 2021. Contrasts in maceral textures in progressive metamorphism versus near-surface hydrothermal metamorphism. International Journal of Coal Geology 246, 103840.

Esmailpour, R., Alipour, S., Doulati Ardejani, F., Rodrigues, S., Esterle, J., 2022. Petrology of the Parvedah coals, Tabas Basin, Iran. International Journal of Coal Geology 258, 1040028.