Knowing pioneer plants can help us understand how colonization of new
land can occur.
These strong plant can colonize our properties in hopes of restoring disturbed soil to create green organic matter, to enrich the soil.
Furthermore, if we look at the earliest pioneer plants, probably they can mine for their own nutrients, be potassium, calcium or nitrogen.
Usually, colonization of newly land (rock, gravel or sand) depends in both type of soil, temperature and humidity. For example, a desert, a volcanic island, exausted soil, or highly disturbed soil.
In Iceland, we have often newly land when eruptions happen and cover large tracts with either
ash deserts, or newly formed lava rocks. These can be large areas many kms wide.
I frequently see creeping thyme (thymus praecox) as one of the pioneer species of acidic soils. Especially when it is deposited gravel (for example volcanic pumice), and not even a lichen or moss has grown before there. Thus, I must assume that creeping thyme fixes nitrogen, otherwise it wouldn't be able to grow there!
When mosses grow, then blueberries, crowberries often grow. Highly acidic and poor soils. But I guess that the mosses and lichens have fixed the nitrogen for the berries. Still, they grow their
roots between the moss and rock (there is actually no soil, only newly formed peat moss). I have also seen bluberries growing out of sole volcanic rock, so they might be also able to fix some degree of nitrogen.
In gravel plains I often see armeria maritima (thrift), large colonization by the n-fixer Nookta lupin (a
perennial and very cold hardy, but agressive invasive), silene acaulis (widespread in new gravel and sand).
There is also a volcanic island created off the coast of Iceland in 1963. No human was ever allowed there, except scientists, to see how plants colonized the newly formed soil. The sucession was like this: sea rocket (a radish-like plant), orache (you probably know this one), sea sandwort (a succulent), oyster plant (borage family) and lyme grass (the orage and oyster are probably edible) appearing after 5 years, following this birds started to establish there (after 10 years) and the original plants grew more abundantly. The original plants probably could get their nitrogen from symbiotic fungi (because the soil was obviously without nitrogen), the potassium, calcium and phophorus were naturally occuring in the rock, and probably leached by rain or bacteria (and probably the plants needs were not that big).
30 years later, northern rock cress (Cardaminopsis petraea), sea campion (Silene uniflora) and thrift arrived in sandy plains (but probably already containing nutrients from the birds) and within the sites of bird colonies, many flowering species arrived there (and only there - therefore they need the nitrogen from the bird excrements!), this includes species like chamomiles, grasses, chickweeds and willows (seeds were probably there for a long time, but only grew when they had the necessary nitrogen).
Maybe this can give you an idea about how important it is for us, in
Permaculture, to keep an idea about pioneer plants, the nutrient cycle, the importance of animals and ecological sucession and habitat placement.
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