Plant Leaves Left On Soil
Many plants produce organic acids. Where plant litter accumulates on or is incorporated to the soil, these acids (including acetic acid, humic acid (see http://www.suprahumic.unina.it/), oxalic acid, and tannic acid) are liberated. This is especially acute in soils under coniferous trees such as pine, spruce and fir, which return fewer base cations to the soil than do most deciduous trees.
Read more about this topic: Soil Acidification
Famous quotes containing the words plant, leaves, left and/or soil:
“If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realise that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“Parting is a trailing streamer,
Lingering like leaves in autumn....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“I’ve always been more afraid of being left alone or left out than of things that go bump in the night.”
—Nelson Gidding (b. 1919)
“The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)