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Not Vegetation!
Source: MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-286, 12 June 2001
NASA/JPL/Malin image link: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/dune_defrost_6_2001/
According to NASA and Malin Space Labs the image below does not show vegetation. That's why they named the following image "Not Vegetation."
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These black spots appear seasonally in the Martian polar regions.
NASA explains: "Despite the "sensation" one gets when looking at pictures of spotted, defrosting martian dunes ( i.e., the sensation that these images show
some form of life, like vegetation, growing on Mars) these features are a normal, common manifestation of the springtime defrosting process on Mars.
The ices involved--because of the low temperatures at these locations--are probably both frozen water and carbon dioxide, though it is unclear as to whether
one type of ice dominates over the other in controlling the appearance and coalescence of the dark spots. It is known from the first martian
year of MOC operations that by summer all of the frost--and thus all of the spots--on the dunes will be gone."
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