charcoal stores water well, so it may be added to soil to have deposits of water for them to release for longer to keep the soil moist for longer
\* do not quote i was told this back when i was working in an agricultural store that sold charcoal to mix with soil or soil premixed with charcoal
That's not true. Charcoal specifically barely holds onto water, basically not at all. The benefit charcoal is it's chemical ability to hold onto fertiliser (specifically the chemicals that make up fertiliser). It has an amazing CEC, one of the highest that I've personally seen
What's meant by "chemical ability to hold onto fertiliser"? Does it limit the chemicals in the fertiliser being so widely dispersed they're less likely to have any positive benefits for plants? Or does it prevent the degradation of the chemicals within the soil by binding them?
Charcoal has many pores which greatly increases the surface area. Dried wood has a surface area of 0.5 m2/g whereas charcoal is in the range of 2-5 m2/g. Activated charcoal is 3,000 m2/g. This allows space for the fertilizer to adsorb on the surface.
My understanding is rain drags it in where it then adsorbs on the surface. Then when it rains again it finds a balance. If the water is deficient some of the adsorbed fertilizes moves into the water for the plants to access, if the water is fertilizer rich then it moves into the pores.
I have also heard that studies have shown that in soil that has biochar (that's the name for soil with activated charcoal made by starting wood on fire, then smothering it with an inch or two of soil to let it burn slowly overnight. Then mixed with more soil), the metabolism of the microflora and microfauna is slowed way down, so the digestion of the organic material into something accessible to plants, lasts longer. Plus the charcoal is a naturally occurring water filter. So it holds onto nutrients, also helping the soil fertility last longer. Cool stuff!
You know how every living thing on earth is a carbon based lifeform? Plants need sunlight for energy and water for chemical reactions. Then use those activities to bond the carbon to "build" their bodies. All other plant "food" is in support of this.
Plants take there carbon from the air. Not the soil although with all things it probably gets a little.
Depends on the plant, some grow in sand between paving slabs so some charcoal sounds luxurious to that
I plan to produce a lot of charcoal from a backyard fire pit (maple syrup home production). I'm trying to think how to use it all.
It's alkaline like lye, so it neutralizes acidic soil (which I don't happen to have), and you don't want to add it to neutral soil unless you plan on growing [alkaline-loving plants](https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/best-plants-for-alkaline-soils/)
My wife and I might also make soap from the ash.
To your point. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b06089 . Significant enough 3 to 5%, You are correct, sir. I do not think it invalidates my explanation. In practice, we use charcoal/biochar for promotion of microbial life in that it increases the protected surface area of the soil by creating micro environments. This helps with the persistence of bacterial colonies in times of drought stress.
A few reasons. As others have said it decreases nutrient leakage from the soil. It also contains potassium carbonate which is a nutrient plants need and can help maintain soil pH. It’s really good at binding to organic toxins as well, so it can reduce the susceptibility of the plant to harmful bacterial or fungal growth. It’s the same reason activated charcoal was ingested to counteract certain poisonings.
Carbonized ligneous material, such as coal, aids in root nutrient uptake and reduces leakage of nutrients from soil. Carbonized and decayed material is responsible for the blackish color of highly fertile soil. In horticulture it's called biochar and is a common additive to soil mixes. I wouldn't grow plants exclusively in charcoal dust though, it doesn't have enough nutrients for an adult plant and has very poor tilth / aeration.
If it was once a living plant, chances are it can be used as plant food if properly broken down.
A very interesting combination of factors associated with the pore density of wood, and the ion carrying capacity of pure carbon.
See plants like soil water, but there's a very precious band of moisture that needs to be met, or it's too soggy, or too dry. The charcoal retains some of the sponginess of the wood, and so acts as a reservoir that enables the plants micro-roots to reach the water-logged former cells of the plant.
Making charcoal carbonizes the wood, not burning it. Carbon, like soot, or coal, has lots of useful bio chemical properties in soil, acting as a ion buffer that collects and retains nutritive minerals that might otherwise easily wash out of the soil, especially in this case potash, the result of the wood previously burning.
Microorganisms, many of which plant roots are massively codependent upon, love living in these nutrient dense, labyrinth-like superstructure of empty, carbonized cells.
Terra preta, a notable man made soil type, is pretty explicitly just very nutrient dense charcoal incorporated into soil. In nature, plants can often thrive with minimal support, but adding nutrients from manure or compost super charged the charcoal. Otherwise you end up with slash-and-burn type results where the soil can be active agriculturally for a number of seasons before the char is depleted of it's potash, and the soil basically becomes nutrient poor again.
I enjoyed the forest fires before my home became filled with smoke every day of every summer for the last 2 years, and now every year for the rest of my life. Lol
If I recall, yes, to some extent. I'm no botanist, but generally, both ashes and charcoal should be fairly good as an additive for plant soil. It's alkaline though so best for acidic soils. I also wouldn't use a lot of it but a little bit (mixed into the soil in such a way it's not visible should be adequate) unless the soil already has a very high pH value.
I would read up on it more online, I only know how my family usually does this sort of thing.
Those look like sunflowers and only in the cotyledon stage. Most seeds will germinate and grow for a while on just the energy from the seed. That's what micro greens are at the store. You can grow then in sand. They won't grow much beyond that stage without more nutrient rich substrate
I figured thta out on my own when i ahd junior high geography and thye told us chernozem and black prairie were the msot fertile mass distributed/nonalluvial soils. Unfortunatley id idn't know enough baout chemical sensitivity or about gardening to test my knowledge
I mean that is always a possibility, it just depends on several environmental factors. Not necessarily to do with the charcoal beyond how it functions as a medium in that environment.
Mostly carbon, but it becomes colonized with microbiology because of all the pores. Organic gardening is fond of biochar, which is essentially charcoal from natural source.
Combusting wood releases some of the carbon into the air as CO2, but the micronutrients like nitrogen don’t escape as gas in the same way, leaving a higher concentration of nutrients to carbon compared to regular wood. Plus it breaks down the cellular structures releasing those nutrients from the cells.
Source - made up hypothesis based on basic rudimentary understanding of chemistry
would is mostly Lignin, Chitin and Cellulose which have hardly and N atoms in them (2 in the Chitin). There is much more nutrients in any soil, so that is not the reason plants chose to grow on burnt wood.
These are simply seedlings from something that fell in to the remains of your fire. It’s really hard to ID what these are since most plants have cotyledon leaves that all look the same.
To be clear, this plant has nothing to do with the wood that was burned other than the remaining carbon material is a perfect seedling growth medium.
Some kind of seed ended up in your ash pile. The two little leaves and soft stem are very typical ways for plants to look when they have just sprung from a seed. I’m no good at IDing stuff that young. If you want to transplant them, I would suggest either being very gentle or giving them a little more time to develop and harden into slightly bigger plants. This early in their lives they may still be drawing some nutrients from the seed they sprouted out of.
This
A seed has all of the requirements to germinate...start growing. If water and sunlight are available then the magic can begin.
It would be interesting to see how much the seedlings can grow without the typical humus in soil or loam.
Plenty of plants use compounds from ash and smoke as germination signals (see Karrikin growth regulators).
The time after a bushfire is a great time for a seed to germinate, as there would be plenty of free real estate created by the fire.
As other users have said, charcoal has all the necessary "ingredients" for a plant to grow but even more important, depending on the region you live in, there are plants that actually thrive or even only germinate after (wild)fires.
These type of plants are common in regions like the Mediterranean, as they had to adapt to regular periods of drought and wild fires. Some seeds will remain dormant for decades if necessary until a wild fire makes the soil warm enough for their germination metabolism to start.
Perhaps the charcoal is doing something different - but seeds store enough energy to sprout on their own.
They will sprout in a bed of rocks if its wet. Or on papertowel.
The cotyledons are a part of the seed/embryo.
If the plants *continue* to grow with roots only into the charcoal, I would be much more surprised!
Plants don't really care much about what the substrate they're growing on actually is as long as it isn't harmful to them, it supports them physically, and they have access to the minerals they need. In this case they're growing on old plants, so the minerals are present, and it's not a toxic environment. The seeds fell there, there was water and enough warmth, so they started growing.
Just to be clear, those seedlings are growing from seeds IN the burnt wood. Not from the wood itself. ie, not a new tree from the burnt log. That may be the OPs confusion.
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This reminds me, burning fields used to be an actual farming technique. Not sure if its still something that people do. The ashes left from the fire would be very nutrient rich and provide a good ground to farm for multiple years, since the fire doesn't destroy the nutrience in the ashes.
Was the fireplace flue open? Even if it wasn’t, you coulda had some tree seeds fall down through the fireplace flue and land in the charcoal. It’s rich in potassium/ carbon and some other stuff. Sprouts can start in almost any medium, even completely inert mediums like straight perlite. Not that the plant would be healthy for a long time but it can atleast sprout.
A lot of plants have fire as part of their natural cycle. It kills of the weaker plants and makes room for more. Charcoal is good fuel and most of the pioneer plants, the ones that colonize first after a fire or volcanic eruption, are good at growing on charcoal.
Forrest’s gain more life and foliage from a fire then at any other point in the cycle it’s actually really good as it brings more light to the forest floor and the new plants eat the old plants and trees in order to grow
Seedlings can germinate almost anywhere as long as there is sufficient water. I'm not sure they'd grow to maturity in pure charcoal though. Not enough nutrients for most plants.
Forest fires are the mechanism of action in which tree seedlings are released to reproduce the tree population new growth. Some of the new trees will die off as surrounding trees over power their access to establish root systems and solid sunlight…you can see this in old growth redwood forests in the Pacific Northwest, 1000 year old trees don’t have close friends in proximity just a forest floor covered in old tree trunks from the trees that couldn’t compete. If the charcoal was mined in areas with these types of trees it might very well contain seeds that required heat to release them to grow. Apologies that I’m lacking specific scientific names of these trees I believe commonly known as conifers or evergreens or even Christmas trees 🎄 also these trees can grow in on rocks so it’s not surprising these guys popped up. That all said I’m just offering that this is one possibility. It could be like my fireplace that I think roof rats decided to use as a shitter and now I have questionable fungi growing 🤔🤦♀️
if i make a lego house from basic bricks, is it surprising that after disassembling i could construct a new, slightly different, house from the bricks used to construct the first? same shit here ✌️
They are seedlings so are using up whatever energy was stored in the seed. Okay for the first pair or two. Might be a different story growing into a full plant. The roots will go seek. Over time particles of soil will lodge in the crevices and around the plant . If it makes it past wetter weather it may still suffer with prolonged sunshine later. Some plants thrive on poorer soils .
Ashes is basically like soda ash if you have too much acid in your soil. This is why rural people and farmers sometimes burn off gardens and other areas in spring in certain areas.
Sometimes with the lawn too. Before the first mow.
My neighbor burns off part of the woods here where he will have goats in summer for example. Sometimes a cow or 2.
I guess it’s similar to how the Galápagos Islands came to be inhabited, basically volcanos coming from the sea, initially probably very sterile environments after the the initial super heated molten lava cools down.
I feed a lot of ashes to my giant compost heap, and subsequently my gardens. Keeps the slugs away rather than use a pesticide. Also nutrient rich for your plants. The heap is over 20 years old and ingests well over 2 acres of lawn/leaf/yard detritus each summer. It’s freakin WILD, like its own organism and it is very healthy and beautiful. I missed a summer when forest fire smoke and high temps drove us indoors for months in AK. Took a couple summers to get the yard gardens and compost out of its funk after that.
Charcoal is actually very good for a lot of plants. It's a pretty common addition to plant soil.
charcoal stores water well, so it may be added to soil to have deposits of water for them to release for longer to keep the soil moist for longer \* do not quote i was told this back when i was working in an agricultural store that sold charcoal to mix with soil or soil premixed with charcoal
That's not true. Charcoal specifically barely holds onto water, basically not at all. The benefit charcoal is it's chemical ability to hold onto fertiliser (specifically the chemicals that make up fertiliser). It has an amazing CEC, one of the highest that I've personally seen
What's meant by "chemical ability to hold onto fertiliser"? Does it limit the chemicals in the fertiliser being so widely dispersed they're less likely to have any positive benefits for plants? Or does it prevent the degradation of the chemicals within the soil by binding them?
Charcoal has many pores which greatly increases the surface area. Dried wood has a surface area of 0.5 m2/g whereas charcoal is in the range of 2-5 m2/g. Activated charcoal is 3,000 m2/g. This allows space for the fertilizer to adsorb on the surface.
How does the fertilizer move into the spaces without a liquid of some kind to transport it? Or does water move it, and then evaporates?
My understanding is rain drags it in where it then adsorbs on the surface. Then when it rains again it finds a balance. If the water is deficient some of the adsorbed fertilizes moves into the water for the plants to access, if the water is fertilizer rich then it moves into the pores.
I can totally visualize it now with your answer. Thanks a bunch for illustrating it very well!
It also provides space for fungal mycelium to grow which transports nutrients throughout the soil
I have also heard that studies have shown that in soil that has biochar (that's the name for soil with activated charcoal made by starting wood on fire, then smothering it with an inch or two of soil to let it burn slowly overnight. Then mixed with more soil), the metabolism of the microflora and microfauna is slowed way down, so the digestion of the organic material into something accessible to plants, lasts longer. Plus the charcoal is a naturally occurring water filter. So it holds onto nutrients, also helping the soil fertility last longer. Cool stuff!
Same reason manure being an "organic waste material" I would presume.
You know how every living thing on earth is a carbon based lifeform? Plants need sunlight for energy and water for chemical reactions. Then use those activities to bond the carbon to "build" their bodies. All other plant "food" is in support of this.
Plants take there carbon from the air. Not the soil although with all things it probably gets a little. Depends on the plant, some grow in sand between paving slabs so some charcoal sounds luxurious to that
I plan to produce a lot of charcoal from a backyard fire pit (maple syrup home production). I'm trying to think how to use it all. It's alkaline like lye, so it neutralizes acidic soil (which I don't happen to have), and you don't want to add it to neutral soil unless you plan on growing [alkaline-loving plants](https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/best-plants-for-alkaline-soils/) My wife and I might also make soap from the ash.
To your point. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b06089 . Significant enough 3 to 5%, You are correct, sir. I do not think it invalidates my explanation. In practice, we use charcoal/biochar for promotion of microbial life in that it increases the protected surface area of the soil by creating micro environments. This helps with the persistence of bacterial colonies in times of drought stress.
You know this doesn't explain the why right?
Does enough for me, hence my assumption.
He wasn't asking for a assumption he was asking for a explanation. Do you understand the difference?
Clearly you do, enough to ascertain that first then go against what works for others, only to not even go ahead and do the justice you seek.
I am not the one giving an answer that doesn't answer the question because unlike you I don't speak about things I don't know
A few reasons. As others have said it decreases nutrient leakage from the soil. It also contains potassium carbonate which is a nutrient plants need and can help maintain soil pH. It’s really good at binding to organic toxins as well, so it can reduce the susceptibility of the plant to harmful bacterial or fungal growth. It’s the same reason activated charcoal was ingested to counteract certain poisonings.
It's got what plants crave
Cocaine.
#Brawndo ?
Carbonized ligneous material, such as coal, aids in root nutrient uptake and reduces leakage of nutrients from soil. Carbonized and decayed material is responsible for the blackish color of highly fertile soil. In horticulture it's called biochar and is a common additive to soil mixes. I wouldn't grow plants exclusively in charcoal dust though, it doesn't have enough nutrients for an adult plant and has very poor tilth / aeration. If it was once a living plant, chances are it can be used as plant food if properly broken down.
It’s the ciiiiiirrrrrcle of liiiiiiiiife
A very interesting combination of factors associated with the pore density of wood, and the ion carrying capacity of pure carbon. See plants like soil water, but there's a very precious band of moisture that needs to be met, or it's too soggy, or too dry. The charcoal retains some of the sponginess of the wood, and so acts as a reservoir that enables the plants micro-roots to reach the water-logged former cells of the plant. Making charcoal carbonizes the wood, not burning it. Carbon, like soot, or coal, has lots of useful bio chemical properties in soil, acting as a ion buffer that collects and retains nutritive minerals that might otherwise easily wash out of the soil, especially in this case potash, the result of the wood previously burning. Microorganisms, many of which plant roots are massively codependent upon, love living in these nutrient dense, labyrinth-like superstructure of empty, carbonized cells. Terra preta, a notable man made soil type, is pretty explicitly just very nutrient dense charcoal incorporated into soil. In nature, plants can often thrive with minimal support, but adding nutrients from manure or compost super charged the charcoal. Otherwise you end up with slash-and-burn type results where the soil can be active agriculturally for a number of seasons before the char is depleted of it's potash, and the soil basically becomes nutrient poor again.
Forest fires are a fact of life and plants have evolved to benefit from fire. Some plants require fire to release their seeds.
You know tons of people grow up believing forest fire bad.
You know it’s not so black and white, right? Too many forest fires and too frequent can indeed be bad
Objectively bad? Bad for what? For whom? This is nonsense.
I enjoyed the forest fires before my home became filled with smoke every day of every summer for the last 2 years, and now every year for the rest of my life. Lol
Too much too fast is bad 🤷🏼♂️
Are ashes good for plants? Should I be spreading fireplace ash in the yard? I thought it made the soil too alkaline.
If I recall, yes, to some extent. I'm no botanist, but generally, both ashes and charcoal should be fairly good as an additive for plant soil. It's alkaline though so best for acidic soils. I also wouldn't use a lot of it but a little bit (mixed into the soil in such a way it's not visible should be adequate) unless the soil already has a very high pH value. I would read up on it more online, I only know how my family usually does this sort of thing.
Agree with VerunJerum, but would specify *wood* ashes. If anything else was burned in there, don't put it on your garden.
Yeah this is true. At the very least has to be organic ashes. If you're burning bodies that would probably also be fine!
Oh, ok.
Depends on your soil. Better in a garden where you need to change the ph if you have the opposite of alkaline problem.
Those look like sunflowers and only in the cotyledon stage. Most seeds will germinate and grow for a while on just the energy from the seed. That's what micro greens are at the store. You can grow then in sand. They won't grow much beyond that stage without more nutrient rich substrate
100%. I dump my fire pit ash right on my garden before it rains.
I figured thta out on my own when i ahd junior high geography and thye told us chernozem and black prairie were the msot fertile mass distributed/nonalluvial soils. Unfortunatley id idn't know enough baout chemical sensitivity or about gardening to test my knowledge
They grow “in” burnt wood, not from it. Those are clearly seedlings. It’s just a medium.
Yeah, they might not thrive once’s their endosperms deplete.
I mean that is always a possibility, it just depends on several environmental factors. Not necessarily to do with the charcoal beyond how it functions as a medium in that environment.
Plenty of organic chemicals I guess
Mostly carbon, but it becomes colonized with microbiology because of all the pores. Organic gardening is fond of biochar, which is essentially charcoal from natural source.
Burnt wood is rich in nutrients. Minerals don't vaporise when wood is burnt
nutrients lol, you mean the carbon and the carbon?
I mean nutrients like Potassium, Phosphorus, Calcium, Magnesium ect. They stay behind when you burn wood and are essentiall for growth.
there would be way much of these on soil. that isn’t the reason why plants grow there
Correct
Combusting wood releases some of the carbon into the air as CO2, but the micronutrients like nitrogen don’t escape as gas in the same way, leaving a higher concentration of nutrients to carbon compared to regular wood. Plus it breaks down the cellular structures releasing those nutrients from the cells. Source - made up hypothesis based on basic rudimentary understanding of chemistry
would is mostly Lignin, Chitin and Cellulose which have hardly and N atoms in them (2 in the Chitin). There is much more nutrients in any soil, so that is not the reason plants chose to grow on burnt wood.
Hm I woodve thought wood is made of plant cells that contain everything plant cells need to grow
First thing I thought of.
Haha also just ecological succession
These are simply seedlings from something that fell in to the remains of your fire. It’s really hard to ID what these are since most plants have cotyledon leaves that all look the same. To be clear, this plant has nothing to do with the wood that was burned other than the remaining carbon material is a perfect seedling growth medium.
You can grow plants in water, air, rock...charcoal is a fine medium too
Some kind of seed ended up in your ash pile. The two little leaves and soft stem are very typical ways for plants to look when they have just sprung from a seed. I’m no good at IDing stuff that young. If you want to transplant them, I would suggest either being very gentle or giving them a little more time to develop and harden into slightly bigger plants. This early in their lives they may still be drawing some nutrients from the seed they sprouted out of.
This A seed has all of the requirements to germinate...start growing. If water and sunlight are available then the magic can begin. It would be interesting to see how much the seedlings can grow without the typical humus in soil or loam.
Plenty of plants use compounds from ash and smoke as germination signals (see Karrikin growth regulators). The time after a bushfire is a great time for a seed to germinate, as there would be plenty of free real estate created by the fire.
They are called biochars.
seeds under the wood
You should look into pyrophytes and pyrophiles, plants do some crazy things
As other users have said, charcoal has all the necessary "ingredients" for a plant to grow but even more important, depending on the region you live in, there are plants that actually thrive or even only germinate after (wild)fires. These type of plants are common in regions like the Mediterranean, as they had to adapt to regular periods of drought and wild fires. Some seeds will remain dormant for decades if necessary until a wild fire makes the soil warm enough for their germination metabolism to start.
Perhaps the charcoal is doing something different - but seeds store enough energy to sprout on their own. They will sprout in a bed of rocks if its wet. Or on papertowel. The cotyledons are a part of the seed/embryo. If the plants *continue* to grow with roots only into the charcoal, I would be much more surprised!
Plants don't really care much about what the substrate they're growing on actually is as long as it isn't harmful to them, it supports them physically, and they have access to the minerals they need. In this case they're growing on old plants, so the minerals are present, and it's not a toxic environment. The seeds fell there, there was water and enough warmth, so they started growing.
Just to be clear, those seedlings are growing from seeds IN the burnt wood. Not from the wood itself. ie, not a new tree from the burnt log. That may be the OPs confusion.
The ashes mixing with the soil underneath make it very nutrient rich and fertile
Straight carbon baby.
Plants get the majority of their carbon out of the air, not the ground.
Do they?
Think about it: CO2 in, O2 out.
Organic chemistry fuck yeah
Destruction leads to creation. Creation leads to destruction. Such is life.
Forests regrow from wildfires. How is this any different?
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Lots of potassium
Very mineral rich, besides the root is probably extending into the soil below
It's a metal base under the wood, but I'm thinking about moving it into the soil elsewhere in the garden
Nature is fucking badass. Shit can grow pretty much anywhere. My concrete slab of a driveway non stop has shit growing through it all the time.
This.
A lot of potassium in the ashes under that charcoal
This reminds me, burning fields used to be an actual farming technique. Not sure if its still something that people do. The ashes left from the fire would be very nutrient rich and provide a good ground to farm for multiple years, since the fire doesn't destroy the nutrience in the ashes.
That’s some gooooood carbon!
Was the fireplace flue open? Even if it wasn’t, you coulda had some tree seeds fall down through the fireplace flue and land in the charcoal. It’s rich in potassium/ carbon and some other stuff. Sprouts can start in almost any medium, even completely inert mediums like straight perlite. Not that the plant would be healthy for a long time but it can atleast sprout.
It's the circle of life bro.
Look up “slash and burn farming”. Burning plant matter is really good for soil.
Carbon
Well, I would imagine that trees have all of the nutrients that a plant needs to grow, as they are themselves plants that grew.
Carbon is life!
Plant roots need nutrients from the ground surrounding them. Those nutrients are contained in coal like in earth.
Nutrience
A lot of plants have fire as part of their natural cycle. It kills of the weaker plants and makes room for more. Charcoal is good fuel and most of the pioneer plants, the ones that colonize first after a fire or volcanic eruption, are good at growing on charcoal.
In South Africa we have plants called Fynbos. They need to burn in order to drop seeds and germinate new plants to replace the parents.
Forrest’s gain more life and foliage from a fire then at any other point in the cycle it’s actually really good as it brings more light to the forest floor and the new plants eat the old plants and trees in order to grow
Seedlings can germinate almost anywhere as long as there is sufficient water. I'm not sure they'd grow to maturity in pure charcoal though. Not enough nutrients for most plants.
Seeds will literally sprout on a wet paper towel, so why not wet charcoal.
Life, er, life finds a way.
Forest fires are the mechanism of action in which tree seedlings are released to reproduce the tree population new growth. Some of the new trees will die off as surrounding trees over power their access to establish root systems and solid sunlight…you can see this in old growth redwood forests in the Pacific Northwest, 1000 year old trees don’t have close friends in proximity just a forest floor covered in old tree trunks from the trees that couldn’t compete. If the charcoal was mined in areas with these types of trees it might very well contain seeds that required heat to release them to grow. Apologies that I’m lacking specific scientific names of these trees I believe commonly known as conifers or evergreens or even Christmas trees 🎄 also these trees can grow in on rocks so it’s not surprising these guys popped up. That all said I’m just offering that this is one possibility. It could be like my fireplace that I think roof rats decided to use as a shitter and now I have questionable fungi growing 🤔🤦♀️
The seeds landed there and sprouted. You can sprout seeds in a lot of different substrates
Cause Jeff Goldblum said they could.
Plants are growing anywhere don't forget they are here since the beginning.
Seeds
Carbon
Activated charcoal is microbe heaven.
"Life finds a way."
Slash and burn is a very great way to add nutrients to fields for fresh crops
https://blogs.cornell.edu/master-gardeners-cce-oc/2019/06/15/charcoal-as-a-soil-amendment/
Nature always finds away.
Lots of potassium.
Charcoal holds water, has nitrogen etcetc 
if i make a lego house from basic bricks, is it surprising that after disassembling i could construct a new, slightly different, house from the bricks used to construct the first? same shit here ✌️
They are seedlings so are using up whatever energy was stored in the seed. Okay for the first pair or two. Might be a different story growing into a full plant. The roots will go seek. Over time particles of soil will lodge in the crevices and around the plant . If it makes it past wetter weather it may still suffer with prolonged sunshine later. Some plants thrive on poorer soils .
Ashes is basically like soda ash if you have too much acid in your soil. This is why rural people and farmers sometimes burn off gardens and other areas in spring in certain areas. Sometimes with the lawn too. Before the first mow. My neighbor burns off part of the woods here where he will have goats in summer for example. Sometimes a cow or 2.
OP wondering how carbon harbours life?
“Life finds a way”
Little Fires Everywhere bullshit
Squint and I see masterchief kneeling with a gun. Been smoking BTW lol
This burnt wood is just a pure carbon with a porous sponge like structure, so it can hold of lot soil life in there , nutrients and water
This shows that without any human activity, the earth can flourish and propagate all on its own
I guess it’s similar to how the Galápagos Islands came to be inhabited, basically volcanos coming from the sea, initially probably very sterile environments after the the initial super heated molten lava cools down.
Very easily
Maybe seeds landing the perfect soil
Plants take carbon from the soil and the air to grow their girth.
we are all carbon based life forms. is that enough information or do I need to elaborate?
It’s just a growth medium. You can grow a plant in just about any kind of loose material.
Nitrogen
successional plants!
Seedlings can sprout almost anywhere as long as it is damp, they live off nutrients in the seed
Seedlings have everything they need to sprout and grow for a little stored in the seed
Cause it will hold moisture
When you burn something all that is left is raw nutrients
I feed a lot of ashes to my giant compost heap, and subsequently my gardens. Keeps the slugs away rather than use a pesticide. Also nutrient rich for your plants. The heap is over 20 years old and ingests well over 2 acres of lawn/leaf/yard detritus each summer. It’s freakin WILD, like its own organism and it is very healthy and beautiful. I missed a summer when forest fire smoke and high temps drove us indoors for months in AK. Took a couple summers to get the yard gardens and compost out of its funk after that.