Soil Chemistry and Effect On Plant Growth
Analyses of pygmy forest soils show low levels of macro— and micro—nutrients, and high levels of exchangeable aluminum, which limits the ability of plants to grow. Low pH conditions support formation of an iron hardpan, preventing the trees from setting deep roots and preventing internal drainage of soil water.
As a result, the pine trees in the area are rarely more than three or four feet high, in a sort of natural bonsai effect. Many of the tree trunks, though only an inch thick, contain 80 or more growth rings. Only yards away, but with younger soils, the same species of tree grows many dozens of feet high.
Read more about this topic: Pygmy Forest
Famous quotes containing the words soil, chemistry, effect, plant and/or growth:
“An underground grower, blind and a common brown;
Got a misshapen look, it’s nudged where it could;
Simple as soil yet crowded as earth with all.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world.... I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.””
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“The second [of Zeno’s arguments about motion] is the one called “Achilles.” This is to the effect that the slowest as it runs will never be caught by the quickest. For the pursuer must first reach the point from which the pursued departed, so that the slower must always be some distance in front.”
—Zeno Of Elea (c. 490–430 B.C.)
“I please
To plant some more dew-wet anemones
That they may weep.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“Here commences what was called, twenty years ago, the best timber land in the State. This very spot was described as “covered with the greatest abundance of pine,” but now this appeared to me, comparatively, an uncommon tree there,—and yet you did not see where any more could have stood, amid the dense growth of cedar, fir, etc.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)