The more commonly found form putti is the plural of the Italian word putto. The Italian word comes from the Latin word putus, meaning boy or child. Today, in Italian, putto means either toddler winged angel or, rarely, toddler boy.
What exactly is the difference between stalactites and stalagmites? Which one hangs above and which one stands up from the ground? Stalactites and stalagmites are what are known as speleothems, deposits of minerals that form into cave structures and line the insides of a cave. Stalactites are the formations that hang from the ceilings of caves like icicles, while stalagmites look like they're emerging from the ground and stand up like a traffic cone. Some may take thousands of years to form, while others can grow quite rapidly.
Stalactites form when water containing dissolved calcium bicarbonate from the limestone rock drips from the ceiling of a cave. As the water comes into contact with the air, some of the calcium bicarbonate precipitates back into limestone to form a tiny ring, which gradually elongates to form a stalactite. Stalagmites grow upwards from the drips that fall to the floor. They spread outwards more, so they have a wider, flatter shape than stalactites, but they gain mass at roughly the same rate. Limestone stalactites form extremely slowly â usually less than 10cm every thousand years â and radiometric dating has shown that some are over 190,000 years old.