Textural 'unconformities' or truncations are common in porphyroblasts with complex inclusion trails.They reflect cycles of successive foliations that develop against competent porphyroblasts during orogenesis and are preserved by successive growth increments. Their truncational character results from shear and dissolution along a particular foliation generating a differentiated crenulation cleavage. The increment of porphyroblast growth that follows a textural 'unconformity' may or may not mark a significant compositional change, depending on the amount of movement of the rock through P-T space between cleavage-forming events.Although historically interpreted to result from a significant metamorphic hiatus, most textural unconformities indicate that the reactions involved in the formation of these minerals are episodic during continuous prograde metamorphism, starting and stopping as a function of the stage of crenulation of the matrix foliation and the pattern of deformation partitioning. Such episodic reaction behaviour can only occur for multivariant reactions, or successive but different univariant reactions. The reason why garnet is the most common porphyroblast to exhibit evidence for episodic reactions is probably the fact that it grows by multivariant reactions over a much wider P-T range than most other common porphyroblast phases.Porphyroblast growth is micrometasomatic. It is episodic because a significant reduction of strain occurs within domains of progressive shortening each time continuous progressive shearing domains form on their margins. This stops microfracture development across the progressive shortening domains, thereby preventing rapid access and interaction of fluid, ions and complexes with porphyroblast boundaries.Shifting patterns of deformation partitioning and resulting small-scale juxtaposition of different compositional layers spreads the duration and location of multivariant reactions and causes differential timing of porphyroblast growth along a particular stratigraphic horizon. It may also locally preserve metastable metamorphic assemblages.In regionally rnetamorphosing/deforming pelites, near-simultaneous cessation of porphyroblast growth on all rims, once continuous differentiated progressive shearing domains have formed nearby, precludes fluid recirculation as a significant process for removal of material during cleavage development. Alternatively, diffusion of simple molecules and dissociated ions along actively shearing and micro-gaped phyllosilicates, with recomplexing in fluid-filled microfractures, readily explains the control of deformation partitioning on reaction site and reaction duration.

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New data strongly suggest that the classical spiral garnet porphyroblasts of south-east Vermont, USA, generally did not rotate, relative to geographical coordinates, throughout several stages of non-coaxial ductile deformation. The continuity of inclusion trails (S,) in these porphyroblasts is commonly disrupted by planar to weakly arcuate discontinuities, consisting of truncations and differentiation zones where quartz-graphite S, bend sharply into more graphitic S,. Discontinuous, tight microfold hinges with relatively straight axial planes are also present. These microstructures form part of a complete morphological gradation between near-orthogonally arranged, discontinuous inclusion segments and smoothly curving, continuous S, spirals. Some 2700 pitch measurements of well-developed inclusion discontinuities and discontinuous microfold axial planes were taken from several hundred vertically orientated thin sections of various strike, from specimens collected at 28 different locations around the Chester and Athens domes. The results indicate that the discontinuities have predominantly subvertical and subhorizontal orientations, irrespective of variations in the external foliation attitude, macrostructural geometry and apparent porphyroblast-matrix rotation angles. Combined with evidence for textural zoning, this supports the recent hypothesis that porphyroblasts grow incrementally during successive cycles of subvertical and subhorizontal crenulation cleavage development. Less common inclined discontinuities are interpreted as resulting from deflection of anastomosing matrix foliations around obliquely orientated crystal faces prior to inclusion. Most of the idioblastic garnet porphyroblasts have a preferred crystallographic orientation. Dimensionally elongate idioblasts also have a preferred shape orientation, with long axes orientated normal to the mica folia, within which epitaxial nucleation occurred.Truncations and differentiation zones result from the formation of differentiated crenulation cleavage seams against porphyroblast margins, in association with progressive and selective strain-induced dissolution of matrix minerals and locally also the porphyroblast margin. Non-rotation of porphyroblasts, relative to geographical coordinates, suggests that deformation at the microscale is heterogeneous and discontinuous in the presence of undeformed, relatively large and rigid heterogeneities, which cause the progressive shearing (rotational) component of deformation to partition around them. The spiral garnet porphyroblasts therefore preserve the most complete record of the complex, polyphase tectonic and metamorphic history experienced in this area, most of which was destroyed in the matrix by progressive foliation rotation and reactivation, together with recrystallization.

Extensive examination of large numbers of spatially orientated thin sections of orientated samples from orogens of all ages around the world has demonstrated that porphyroblasts do not rotate relative to geographical coordinates during highly non-coaxial ductile deformation of the matrix subsequent to their growth. This has been demonstrated for all tectonic environments so far investigated. The work also has provided new insights and data on metamorphic, structural and tectonic processes including: (1) the intimate control of deformation partitioning on metamorphic reactions; (2) solutions to the lack of correlation between lineations that indicate the direction of movement within thrusts and shear zones, and relative plate motion; and ( 3 ) a possible technique for determining the direction of relative plate motion that caused orogenesis in ancient orogens.