Plant succession essay

The bare area may be a rock, open soil surface or a shallow pool or lake; it is successively occupied by different plant communities. According to Odum, “plant succession may be defined as an orderly process of community change”.

In the words of Salisbury, “Plant succession is a competitive drift in which at each phase until the climax the constituent species render the habitat more favorable to their successors than to themselves.”

Major steps in a autotrophic succession are as follows: 1. Nudation: An area is exposed. 2. Migration: The process of dispersal of seeds, spores and other structures of propagation of the species to bare area is known as migration. 3. Germination: It occurs when conditions are favourable.

This kind of succession begins wherever the existing vegetation has been destroyed without denuding the area of soil. It usually starts after forest fires, cutting of the trees, flood and erosions. It is also of common occurrence in abandoned agricultural lands.