Whats going on with this crazy Sitka Spruce tree?!

Whoa, check out this incredible Sitka Spruce growing from this old stump of a Western Redcedar - what the cuss is going on here?!
This is a nurse log, or nurse stump in this case, which is a prime example of the complexities that can form in a forest ecosystem over time. This old western Redcedar was cut down around a hundred years ago, and you can tell because it has these springboard notches still visible where old-school loggers would have stood to cut the tree down above the fluted base where it grew straight.
Once it was felled, the forest would’ve started to regenerate naturally (this was way before tree planting was a thing) and this stump would’ve started to decay to form a layer of soil from leaf litter and detritus thats collected on top of it, eventually forming enough so that an itty bitty Sitka Spruce seed was able to land on top and germinate, sprouting roots into that layer of duff on top of the stump and eventually making their way down the side of the stump into the soil where it can get a more steady supply of water and nutrients. As this Spruce grew and gained more weight and girth, it split that Cedar stump to become this behemoth of a tree growing from the remnants of its predecessors.
Over time as this Redcedar stump decays, it’ll leave a gap at the base of this spruce that will become a den or habitat for critters like Bears or Martens, and this complexity only arises when these forests are left to be able to mature and develop in ways that simply cant be replicated in our modern industrial mode of logging and replanting forests. Pretty dang neat to see that in action, what a beauty!
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Produced & Directed by Ross Reid
~ I'd like to acknowledge that this video was filmed on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples-Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations. ~
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[@minghea2754]

That's pretty amazing if I do say so myself

[@NerdyAboutNature]

Truly!