Meadows had bare, grass-free circles in them. Inland ground was dotted with invisible rock sites meant for sea stacks, buried 1.4 km under the land, and each one cleared a 12 m ring of turf, seed heads and flowers. The world generator now places sea stacks only at sea, so in a new world the turf runs unbroken and the coastal stacks are where they were.
Smaller plants came up out of the ground as well. Ferns, sedges, deer brush, sagebrush, lupines and saplings had each been pushed half their height into the soil, so only the tips showed, and they now stand on their stems. Grass on rising ground, which a fault in how snow buries plants had pressed into the slope, should stand at its full height again. That fix was made from reading the code and has no before and after frame yet.
A new plant grows on moist, shaded conifer floors: the western sword fern, built from a scan, with fourteen fronds arching out of a crown. It sways, bends when you walk through it and gives a little fiber when picked. Lupine flowers were redrawn from public-domain National Park Service photos, a soft blue instead of saturated blobs. Other flowers and shrubs still use drawn sheets, because there are no free scans of the Sierra species.
