The strand fills with water during the rainy season that the peat then holds and keeps it humid, all of which creates conditions enabling trees to grow.

A. enabling trees to grow.
B. for the trees to grow.
C. for growing trees.
D. that enable the trees to grow.
E. that the trees can grow.

I feel it is (D)

The strand fills with water during the rainy season that the peat then holds and keeps it (what?) humid, all of which creates conditions (what kind of conditions? Notice the plural usage of conditions, hence there are many conditions) .. that enable (confirms with the plural form - conditions) the trees to grow.

Everybody should recognize that this is not an official GMAT question. However, something could be learned here.

OA is (D)
What is wrong with (A) and (B)?

I don't think you can rewrite

"The strand fills with water during the rainy season that the peat then holds and keeps it humid, all of which creates conditions enabling trees to grow."

as

"The strands... keeps it humid, all of which creates conditions and enable trees to grow"

(A) and (D) are grammatically same. I don't know how the meaning changes if we use participle phrase here as in (A).

My experience is that if one sees "for ... to ..." in a GMAT question one could almost be sure that it is wrong. Examples: for the trees to grow, for the eyes to register it, etc.

We often use it this way in our life. For example, we would say "Would it be possible for you to fix it for me?" But there's almost always a better way to say it: "Could you please fix it for me?"

Just a feeling, perhaps somebody could give us some insights from the grammar point of view.

Well what exactly is the skin –deep difference between for growing and to grow?

It is clear that ‘to grow’ is an infinitive that is used to do something, or that is used to achieve some purpose. 'For' in for growing is used as a preposition, which has to be followed by either a noun/pronoun, or noun phrase/pronoun phrase.

1. for growing – You can use growing after for if you meant to use growing as a gerund.


2. for growing trees; growing here can be ambiguous; it can either be a gerund or an adjective modifying trees.

3. for trees to grow; the prepositional for is ok because a noun phrase’ trees to grow” follows.
and
4. to grow trees. : simple – to grow brings out the purpose ‘ to grow’ trees.



A. enabling trees to grow. Though grammatically correct ,
a participial ‘conditions enabling’ is not as sharp as a relative clause such as ‘conditions that enable’ as in D. A razor thin difference indeed.

B. for the trees to grow. grammatically quite correct.

C. for growing trees. : creates conditions for growing trees. The purpose ‘to enable trees to grow’ is lost.

D. that enable the trees to grow.: to the point and correctly points out that the conditions enable the trees to grow.

E. that the trees can grow.: Change of intention

Except C and E, which blatantly change the meaning, A, B and D are grammatically correct but with insignificant differences. B is indeed most concise.
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