This Kerb tree is doomed, and it knows it. It's the victim of an assassination by the Relentless Sunshade that for more than a century has denied it the slightest glimpse of sunshine.

It cannot save itself, but it has one more trick to make sure it's last seed get the best possible start in life.

For years now it has been expending the last of it's reserves to build up energy-rich resins and oxidizer in its trunk, and the time has come; it ignites them.

A chemical solid fuel rocket, simple but powerful, propels it from the spot it has grown for hundreds of millennia.

Ironically it blasts clear of the shade, a thousand kilometres of iron atop a pillar of flame tearing through the fragile membrane, and tasting sunlight one last time.

But it is to late, by committing to this course of action it has sealed it's fate; it has no way to slow down.

With the speed built up by the rocket, the journey of the seeds will take just over a decade, rather than millennia, and more importantly when the incredibly colossal tonnage of wood crashes into the forest wall at many kilometres per second it will create a large clearing for them to sprout in with minimal competition.

Until then, the few branches that survive will protect them, and have a last few years of sunlight to feed them in preparation for that ordeal.