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Comment by oatmeal1 | Hacker News Reader

I find the idea of planting trees ironic. It would seem to me the better aim would be identifying the issue as to why native plants are not already reproducing successfully, and then fix it. Plants are quite good at reproducing themselves, even if not in the immediate area.

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What do you think botanists and ecologists were doing before large-scale tree planting began?

> It would seem to me the better aim would be identifying the issue as to why native plants are not already reproducing successfully

I live nearby. The issue is: it's located between two lanes of an avenue in a densely populated neighborhood of the largest city in americas. Imagine opening a 100m wide strip of grass in manhattan, you won't expect it to naturally turn into a forest. Same here.

What? No. Plants colonize new areas in complex succession sequences that require hundreds of years to play out. It might start with grasses, then shrubs, then dense stands of trees that die off and are replaced by stands of other trees... maybe there's a fire that needs to happen in between... and let me remind you that a "city park" is not exactly a natural formation anyway.

If you want a park in 30-50 years, you need to plant trees and design it with specific public-use objectives in mind.

Agreed and I think ecological succession is often underappreciated. In secondary succession an ecosystem typically has a deep soil seed bank[0] to draw from. If a plot of land has been ravaged by human development and then abandoned, that may be absent and some human intervention can totally speed things along

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_seed_bank

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