The Plants In A Woodland Community

       Nearly all green plants require light, water, heat, and soil in order to carry out their life processes and make their food. Some shade-loving plants require very little light; other plants need a great deal. Some plants get much light because they are taller or more spreading than their neighbors and so

are not shaded. In a forest the trees affect the conditions of heat, light, water, and wind; and these conditions in turn affect the plants which live beneath the trees. The trees have a protecting effect. They reduce the amount of evaporation, and help to keep the forest damp.

       The smaller trees, the bushes, and the herbs are able to grow in the dimmer light underneath the taller trees. In dense forests the screen above cuts off so much light that few plants can grow underneath, but in most woodlands there is sufficient light filtering through the leaves so that many different kinds of smaller plants are able to grow.

A deer nibbles on the grasses growing in a near by woodland. Read more about woodland.

       Such conditions in the woodlands bring about zones or layers in the vegetation, the plants in each layer being better adapted for growing in a less intense light than those in the one above. In forests where most trees shed their leaves in winter there are usually three or four such zones. Below the canopy of the tallest trees is a layer made up of smaller trees and tall shrubs. These small trees are quite often young and may eventually grow to be as tall as the largest trees. The plants which are able to grow in the still denser shadow of the double layer above are the low bushes and herbs. These range in size from a few inches to three or four feet in height. The lowest layer, one for which you must look closely, is the mossy covering on the rocks, the decaying trees, or the ground.

       The particular season during which the smaller plants do most of their blooming and growing is largely determined by the amount of available light, moisture, and space. Most of the plants which make up the layer on the forest floor start their seasonal activities as soon as conditions become favorable in the spring. The early spring flowers are sure to have a good water supply. The melting winter snows and the spring rains have combined to saturate the soil. In early spring there is plenty of light on the floor of the forest because the bushes and trees do not yet have their leaves. Many plants such as the skunk cabbage, hepaticas, bloodroots, spring-beauties, adder's tongue, and blue phlox get an early start, often while the ground is still partly frozen, because they have stored food material in their bulbs, roots, or rootstocks. This enables them to grow their leaves and bloom long before the bushes and trees get their leaves and shade the ground.

       A little later the forest floor begins to support larger leafy plants such as white trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, and May apples; the smaller spring plants, crowded and shaded, are maturing their fruit and become relatively inactive. The later herbs are able to grow in the diffuse light of the forest after the leafy canopy has been formed. Then after a month or two of blooming they in turn are crowded out by plants adapted for summer growth in forests. So in the forest community there is a continuous change in the plant growth from early spring until summer, from the shortest seedlings and herbs on the forest floor, through the different layers, to the topmost, the trees. Woods

• Learn about woodland habitats from Discovery Education UK.