Responses of Hedysarum Laeve , a guerrilla clonal semi-shrub in the Mu Us sandland, to local sand burial |
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Authors: | Liu Fenghong Ye Xuehua Yu Feihai and Dong Ming |
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Institution: | (1) Key Laboratory of Quantitative Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China;(2) Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100039, China |
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Abstract: | In arid and semi-arid inland deserts, one of the environmental stresses for plants is recurrent sand burial, which can influence
the physical and biotic microenvironments of the plants and soil. Previous studies have shown that different levels of sand
burial have different effects on plants. Slight sand burial could increase the height increment, leaf biomass and the number
of new ramets of the plants while heavy sand burial could impair the growth of the plants and even decrease their chances
of survival. In other words, below a certain threshold level of burial, the growth of plants is stimulated probably because
of multiple factors. However, as the level of burial increases, the positive response starts to decline until it becomes a
negative value. Arid and semi-arid inland deserts are frequently colonized and stabilized by many rhizomatous clonal plants.
Clonal physiological integration often helps clonal plants buffer local environmental stress encountered by ramets. A rhizomatous
clonal semishrub, Hedysarum laeve (H. laeve), is the dominant plant species and important for vegetation restoration in the Mu Us sandland. To investigate whether clonal
integration can increase the threshold of sand burial and help rhizomatous H. laeve tolerate heavy sand burial, we conducted a field experiment. The results showed that slight sand burial could accelerate
ramet growth and enhance leaf biomass, stem biomass and shoot biomass, while heavy sand burial reducesed the biomass of the
plant and impairs survival and growth of the ramets. Clonal integration increased the threshold of sand burial. Under heavy
sand burial, ramets connected to other ramets not buried in sand were more in terms of height increment, stem biomass, leaf
biomass and shoot biomass compared to the ramets encountering sand burial but disconnected from other ramets. It suggested
that clonal physiological integration could help H. laeve ramets tolerate relatively heavy sand burial. We also discussed that clonal integration plays a role in H. laeve presence in the Mu Us sandland.
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Translated from Journal of Plant Ecology (formerly Acta Phytoecologica Sinica), 2006, 30(2): 278–285 译自: 植物生态学报] |
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Keywords: | Clonal integration Hedysarum laeve Mu Su sandland Sand burial |
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