And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.
Genesis 8:11
"Once the continents emerged above water during the Recessional stage of
the Flood, plants likely started growing on the newly exposed land.
Log and vegetation mats that contained seeds, spores, and plant debris
including roots would have been left on the new land. These mats would
also have floated on the oceans for many years after the Flood,
dispersing animals and vegetation to many land areas.
Another mechanism for fast plant growth has recently been discovered on a nearly sterile landscape in Brazil.
Quartzite, a metamorphic sandstone that is almost pure quartz, makes up the bedrock of a region called campos rupestres (Portuguese
meaning ‘rocky grasslands’). The soil from this area is shallow and
patchy with nearly undetectable levels of nutrients needed by plants.
However, it sustains more than 5,000 plant species! Some of the plants
even survive on bare patches of quartzite bedrock.
Quartzite is almost pure silica and has extremely little phosphorus, one of the main elements needed for plant growth. But despite the very low amount of phosphorus, roots from plants of the Velloziaceae family bore into the quartzite to obtain it. This is a never-before observed root specialization. The roots, which are very hairy, penetrate the quartzite at least 10 cm along former sandstone bedding planes. The roots give off acids that dissolve the rock.
We are increasingly discovering that many of the plants that 
colonized
the earth after the Flood had root specializations that would have aided
growth in even nutrient-poor soil or bare rock. This reflects a
creation usefully designed to bounce back from a calamity,
e.g. the Genesis Flood. In the case of the Velloziaceae family, even
bare quartzite rock produced growth. The combination of newly laid soil,
scattered seeds that survived the Flood, log mats, and the unique
ability of plants to squeak out nutrients from unlikely places all add
up to a rapid recovery of the earth’s vegetation after the Flood." CMI
