In the rainforest, fallen trees become nurse logs. Tree seedlings establish along the elevated, decaying trunks, gaining access to light above the saturated forest floor. As the original log fully decomposes, the surviving trees remain in a distinctive straight row, a hallmark pattern of old-growth temperate rainforest regeneration.
There's a small thing worth knowing about how this forest renews itself. When a giant tree finally falls, that's not the end. It becomes a nurse log. As the trunk slowly rots, seedlings sprout right along the top of it, lifted up off the soggy ground and into the light. Years later you'll see whole rows of mature trees standing in a perfectly straight line, all of them rooted in a single fallen ancestor that's long since vanished into soil.
Photo: Ron Clausen · CC BY-SA 4.0
