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The answer is in the question. Fire must be harmful to them. Pine trees, and other conifers have high levels of substances called turpines in their leaves. This serves two maior purposes, to make them taste foul (few animals graze on pine leaves) and to act as a kind of anti-freeze, so the leaves work all year round, even in subarctic conditions.

However, turpines are highly flammable, so pine saplings will rarely survive a grassland fire. The saplings don't survive on the grassland and the trees don't encroach.

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15y ago

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