[schiffern]

  > In turn, most rain comes from water evaporated from surface water

This is true over the whole Earth, but if you look only on land (which is what matters in this case) roughly 80% of rainfall comes from plant transpiration, not evaporation from open bodies of water.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983

[hotnfresh]

I... had never put together that this is probably part of why plants took a (long!) while to colonize land. Between that and there not being a soil-ecology yet, yeah, that paints the picture pretty completely.

[dsr_]

Trees are self-reproducing solar-powered water pumps.

[Teever]

You might find this idea[0] interesting.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories

[yencabulator]

Taken to a scifi extreme: https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Stage_Tree

[jjbinx007]

I sometimes view plants and trees as 3d printers

[kridsdale3]

Animals are too.