Lichens and Grass question

[qcs2017]

First terraforming tryout. Mars is just sufficiently terraformed for grass. My foresting plant has lichen and gras selected, and I see the first sprouts of grass, they seem to spread, but only on lichen-green area.
From what I read, it could be that the grass does only live on min 10% soil quality. But does it auto spread also on red dust if I now switch off the forestation plant? Does gras convert "neighbor hexes" to at least 10% so it can spread itself? I could not find anything on this.

[SkiRich]

The way the plants work ...
Trees and Bushes will displace Grass
Grass will displace Lichen
Lichen will grow on 0% soil quality
Everything else has a minimum and wont even root until that minimum is reached.
If the soil quality drops below the minimum things die.

Grass, Trees and Shrubs all self spread (all at different rates). They also improve neighboring hexes soil quality(again at different rates).

[qcs2017]

So if nothing bad happens like toxic rain, I can switch off the forestation plant now, and ever so slowly the grass will spread... thanks :-) Looking forward to that.

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by qcs2017:

So if nothing bad happens like toxic rain, I can switch off the forestation plant now, and ever so slowly the grass will spread... thanks :-) Looking forward to that.

Yes, I do that too. Saves me the hassle of sending seeds to them.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by qcs2017:

So if nothing bad happens like toxic rain, I can switch off the forestation plant now, and ever so slowly the grass will spread... thanks :-) Looking forward to that.

Yes. It is EXTREMELY slow though. Grass doesn't do a very good job of propagating itself into the barrens because it doesn't improve the soil quality very much. It'll do a decent job of spreading into areas that already have soil quality, either from lichen or from water (from a lake or from clearwater rains), but self-propagating without assistance doesn't work very well.

Bushes and trees can help quite a bit though because they improve the quality a lot more. So if they take root near the border it will improve the quality quite a bit, which allows grass to spread more easily, which then makes conditions for the bush/tree to spread.

[Teo]

how do i prevent the lichen becoming dark green not light green