Some plant growing on a rocky slope. Point Reyes National Seashore, March 24 2010.
I have a noticeably strong affinity for rocky patches with plant growth.
I think it started with a chapter in a Chinese textbook I read in high school. It was an essay of this grass that grew out of a crevice in a rock wall. The essay did a great job praising the resilience of the grass and the values we can learn from it. I am embarrassed to say that I can't do as great a job as that author did, but I can simply tell you what I see in plants that grow on rocky patches.
Patience, and a big long river of time: How many years have passed before a sufficient enough shallow layer of dirt has accumulated on the bare rocks to support plant life? How many years since the first plant started to cast its seeds into the air, hoping to land on dirt and not rocks? I suppose it must have taken ages of disappointment, but the dirt accumulated and a plant found roots.
Determination, and a try-and-try-again spirit: Even in fertile soil, seeds may have trouble germinating, what more of environment as hostile as shallow dirt on rocks? Leaching, erosion, dessication; one small blow and a seedling is finished. Look at a growing plant, and know that countless have failed before this.
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