A comparative study of the tolerance of salt marsh plants to manganese

Summary Salicornia europaea, Puccinellia maritima, Triglochin maritima, Aster tripolium, Plantago maritima, Armeria maritima, Juncus gerardii andFestuca rubra, collected as seed from a salt marsh at Portaferry, County Down, were grown on saline (340 mM NaCl) and non saline nutrient solutions at five concentrations of manganese sulphate (0.025–10.0 mM). After an eight week growing period, shoot and root yields and the concentrations of sodium, potassium, calcium and manganese in the shoots were determined.Except forS. europaea the saline treatments had a strongly limiting effect on plant growth. Each of the species investigated showed a degree of tolerance to high concentrations of manganese which was similar to that of calcifuge species and plants characteristic of waterlogged sand dune slack communities, but which was very much greater than that ofArrhenatherum elatius a species usually excluded from acidic soils. There was little evidence to support the hypothesis that tolerance of high manganese concentrations was correlated with the position of the experimental plants in the salt marsh ecotone or that the manganese nutrition of halophytic and glycophytic marsh species differs. Whilst manganese uptake increased proportionally with solution manganese concentration, there were few other major effects of manganese on the balance of shoot cation concentrations in the plants investigated. Both antagonistic and synergistic effects of sodium on manganese uptake were recorded for different species.