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The Felling of Giant Trees in California
These sequoias grow to from 250 to 400 feet high, though they are not quite the tallest trees in the world.
(See page [47].)
In Switzerland, in those valleys in which the glaciers are melting away, leaving stretches of bare mud, scratched stones, and polished rock, plants immediately begin to settle there. A Swiss botanist watched the process during five or six years, and describes how first the yellow Saxifrage (S. aizoides) establishes itself. Next season Coltsfoot, willow-herb, Oxyria, and two grasses had planted themselves. During the third season another grass came in. By the fourth season, Fescues and yarrow had appeared, and by the fifth season, five grasses, clovers, and yarrow had formed a regular grassland upon the new untouched soil.[104]
In such cases, Nature, who abhors bare ground, is endeavouring to clothe it with useful vegetation.
The fights which are going on are of the most ruthless character. Many weeds are said to produce some 30,000 seeds in one year, and every plant which grows in a meadow is scattering thousands of seeds. But of course the number of plants remains much the same, so that 29,999 seeds are wasted (or the seedlings choked out) for every one that grows up!
It is probably because of this perpetual warfare that the growth of the grasses is so vigorous, and their whole structure so perfectly adapted. If you watch a flowering grass, you are sure to notice how narrow is its stem compared with the height. A factory chimney only fifty-eight feet high requires to be at least four feet broad at the base, yet a ryeplant 1500 millimetres high may be only three millimetres broad near the root. Man's handiwork, the chimney, is in height seventeen times its diameter, but the height of the grass is 500 times its diameter.