Height is also useful for reducing impact of fires, herbivores, some parasites, etc.; and gives you substantially better volume-of-airflow-over-leaves which can be helpful—a flat sheet of leaf-material would underperform substantially for respiration, even before considering the variable angle of sunlight for photosynthesis.
With some handwaving, we seem to agree that “the absence of trees becoming grass-like indicates that there’s no nice/large path in evolution-trajectory-space which is continuously competitive” and I’m gesturing towards the known-to-be-difficult C3/C4 distinction as a potentially-relevant feature of that space.
Note that while our non-expert speculation might turn up interesting relevant considerations, the space is very complicated and high-dimensional, and I at least have very little data or subject matter expertise. I therefore expect my analysis to be wrong, though I do enjoy and learn from doing it.
Height is also useful for reducing impact of fires, herbivores, some parasites, etc.; and gives you substantially better volume-of-airflow-over-leaves which can be helpful—a flat sheet of leaf-material would underperform substantially for respiration, even before considering the variable angle of sunlight for photosynthesis.
With some handwaving, we seem to agree that “the absence of trees becoming grass-like indicates that there’s no nice/large path in evolution-trajectory-space which is continuously competitive” and I’m gesturing towards the known-to-be-difficult C3/C4 distinction as a potentially-relevant feature of that space.
Note that while our non-expert speculation might turn up interesting relevant considerations, the space is very complicated and high-dimensional, and I at least have very little data or subject matter expertise. I therefore expect my analysis to be wrong, though I do enjoy and learn from doing it.