Plants Making Their Way Through Stones

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

The amazing ability of plants to support life on the planet in the most inappropriate conditions for this. Thin grassy blades of grass or quite solid woody plants stretch to the sun, using any crack on the rocky slopes. It seems that with their weak forces they are able to overcome the resistance of stones, making their way through them to the light, triumphing life on Earth

The road to my house in the village stretches in places along the steep rocky slopes. Only professional climbers can overcome these vertical masses, and some plants desperately cling to any crack in the stone monolith. Here you can see

Field carnation (lat. Dianthus campestris), rejoicing in the open rays of the sun with its five picturesque carved petals. Bushes are visible in the vicinity of Carnation

Wormwood (lat. Artemisia absinthium) and some other undersized plants brought here by winds or birds.

In the Altai mountains we met a short

Pine, which made its way to the light through a crack in a huge stone massif. On its branches, a crooked little cone is already gaining maturity - a guarantor of procreation. This Altai Pine resembled a courageous character

Intermountain bristlecone pines (lat. Pinus longaeva), the leader among the long-livers of our planet (the lifespan of such pines is more than four thousand years), growing high in the mountains on the Pacific coast of North America.

All of the above plants, which fate has pleased to live among the stones, grow successfully even in the absence of such. But, there are about six hundred species of plants on the planet that prefer to live among stones or make their way through crevices in stones. They so strongly impressed and delighted botanists with their unique abilities and great love of life that they gave the Latin name to a family of similar plants - “

Saxifragaceae", Consisting of two words that sound like" rock "and" break "in Russian. So today we call the community of such plants a family

Saxifrage

Of course, some species of plants of the Saxifrage family contribute to the destruction of stony soils, and some, on the contrary, strengthen stony mountain taluses with their tenacious and strong roots. But, more often than not, plants simply very deftly adapt for their life crevices between stones, depressions between individual stones, which wind, water, insects and birds, small rodents and large animals fill with pieces of soil, plant remains …, which eventually turn into a nutrient mixture for the growth of living plants.

The most numerous genus in the family is the genus

Saxifrage, uniting in its community more than four hundred species of plants that have chosen the stone element of the planet for their lives. Curious gardeners have long turned their creative eyes to the variety of Saxifrage, among which you can find plants for every taste and any living conditions. Plants that love to settle on rocks prefer sunny places, and there are also species for which shady places are more favorable. Almost all representatives of the Kamnelomkovs love loose, rich, moist, but not damp, soil, without stagnant water.

A perennial plant grows in the mountains of Altai and the south of Kuzbass

Bergenia (lat. Bergenia), popularly called -

Badan, a member of the Saxonfrag family. Its horizontal thick rhizomes creep along rocky crevices, and the taproot goes into the depths, insuring the nutrition of the aboveground part. Spectacular large leaves, trimmed with small teeth, form a picturesque rosette, quietly wintering under snowdrifts, retaining their green color for several years. Old leaves acquire a reddish hue and in the spring, after natural winter fermentation, they are used by humans to prepare a tonic drink.

For more than two centuries, Badan has been grown in European gardens, admiring its picturesque leaves and beautiful inflorescences of miniature goblet flowers. The photo above shows

Badanliving in a summer cottage in Western Siberia.