A king’s successor is the person who will inherit the kingdom when the king is gone. In ecology, succession is the process of one plant community after another inheriting a particular spot of land.

There are two types of succession – primary and secondary. Primary succession starts from scratch as living things such as lichens begin to grow on bare rock.

Secondary succession is much more common. It occurs after an existing plant community has been removed or altered by a disturbance, such as fire. This site was burned last summer and nearly all the existing plant material was removed.

Here we can see the earliest stage of secondary succession as annual grasses and forbs are establishing on the site.

Soon, perennial grasses such as western wheatgrass and Indian ricegrass will inherit this site. The plants we see today will become less and less common.

And eventually, shrubs such as sagebrush and rabbit brush will inherit the spot.

On this site, brush will be king until a new round of disturbance boots him off the throne, and the successional process starts again.

From the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service, I’m Zola Ryan