Ecological succession on a silt bar unfolds in a predictable, staged sequence.

Evidence

To view the painting, give the river three more weeks of solitude, and then visit the bar on some bright morning just after the sun has melted the daybreak fog. The artist has now laid his colors, and sprayed them with dew. The Eleocharis sod, greener than ever, is now spangled with blue mimulus, pink dragon-head, and the milk-white blooms of Sagittaria. Here and there a cardinal flower thrusts a red spear skyward. At the head of the bar, purple ironweeds and pale pink joe-pyes stand tall against the wall of willows. And if you have come quietly and humbly, as you should to any spot that can be beautiful only once, you may surprise a fox-red deer, standing knee-high in the garden of his delight. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 189

Categorization

• SEED: Reading the landscape means knowing what to look for at each stage: Leopold lists ordered signs (silt ribbon, then Eleocharis turf, then specific flowers) that let an observer track a successional clock — a model for teaching landscape reading.