A Mini-saga?

 It looks like this story might last two months at least.  I rescued the little weed from the root network of a potted plant we intended to discard.  This was back on November 6.  I decided to rescue the weed and repot it in the house if only to see if I could identify it if and when it matured.

 A few days after the transplanting it was looking healthy.

 As the days got shorter and the sun lay lower in the sky, the leaves started growing longer, as if reaching for more light, and looking a bit more frail, much like the grass and other seedlings that start their seasons under a rock or large piece of bark.  Some make it to the edge and come out from under where exposure to sunlight saves them.  They start producing chlorophyll and making their own food and are no longer dependent on the food that had been stored in the seed.

 At this point, about a month later, the two original leaves started to stretch out laterally and look even more frail, while the one pointing straight up, perhaps 1/2" closer to the sun, was looking good.

During this past week, the two original leaves were nearly dead. and the two remaining ones were looking like they might still survive the winter.  I still can't identify the plant.  This growth pattern reminded me a bit of the overly dense grove of Douglas-firs near my house.  The top branches, maybe 50 feet or so on a 150-foot tree, stay green and healthy looking while the lowest branches, deprived of direct sun, seem to wither and die.  An isolated Douglas-fir that receives sunlight from top to bottom, usually doesn't grow as tall, but stays green and has denser foliage all the way down to its lowest branches.  Moisture or lack of it probably also plays a part in the mature tree's form.  The Douglas-firs near the coast always seem much greener and have denser foliage than the ones in this part of the Sierra.  I'm sure foresters have studied the growth patterns of all the "marketable" trees, and what I've written here is a pretty superficial bunch of observations.  I'm just trying to share here the fun of discovering some things for oneself.