This race is particularly keen when an old tree dies and leaves a vacant slot in the canopy. The echoing crash of an old tree falling is the starting gun for a race, in real time (although a slower real time than we animals are accustomed to), between saplings that have been waiting for just such a chance. And the winner is likely to be an individual tree that is well equipped, by genes that prospered through ancestral arms races in evolutionary time, to grow fast and high.
