A global trend of woody plant encroachment of terrestrial grasslands is co-incident with woody plant encroachment of wetland in freshwater and saline intertidal settings. There are several arguments for considering tree encroachment of wetlands in the context of woody shrub encroachment of grassland biomes. In both cases, delimitation of woody shrubs at regional scales is set by temperature thr...

Early-successional vegetation is often a major factor that limits recovery of tropical forest in abandoned pastures by outcompeting seedlings of forest trees. The goal of this study was to compare the effects of aboveand below-ground competition of pasture grasses and shrubs on the growth of tree seedlings in abandoned tropical pasture in Costa Rica. Seedlings of Calophyllum brasiliense were pl...

Early plant stages may be the most vulnerable within the life cycle of plants especially in arid ecosystems. Interference from exotic species may exacerbate this condition. We evaluated germination, seedling survival and growth in the endangered Caribbean cactus Harrisia portoricensis, as a function of sunlight exposure (i.e., growing under open and shaded areas), different shade providers (i.e...

Many regions of southern California's coastal sage scrub (CSS) are rapidly declining as exotic annual plants replace native shrubs. During this conversion, the subsurface hydrology of the semiarid hillslopes that support CSS may be altered. This could chronically suppress the ability of native shrubland to revegetate the landscape since ecosystem processes of nutrient availability and of seedli...

The significance of xylem function and metabolic scaling theory begins from the idea that water transport is strongly coupled to growth rate. At the same time, coordination of water transport and growth seemingly should differ between plant functional types. We evaluated the relationships between water transport, growth and species stature in six species of co-occurring trees and shrubs. Within...

Green leaves face two fundamental challenges (i.e., carbon fixation and stress tolerance) during their lifespan. However, the relationships between leaf production potential and leaf tolerance potential have not been explicitly tested with a broad range of plant species in the same environment. To do so, we conducted a field investigation based on 107 woody plants grown in a common garden and c...

The study addresses accumulation of radionuclides by mushrooms and berry shrubs from the forest soil in the 30-km area around the MCC (the Krasnoyarskii Krai, Russia). The Suillus granulatus and S. luteus mushrooms have been found to be the best bioindicators in this area. The level of 137Cs concentration in these species can reach 10 kBq/kg dry mass. The 137Cs transfer factor (TF) by the mushr...

The accumulation of heavy metals in naturally occurring plants of herbs, shrubs and trees grown on South Bolanda coal mine overburdens in subtropical region of India were illustrated.. The inter-elemental relationships of different parts of five plant species including herbs, shrubs and trees with the coal mine wastes were studied. From the tree species maximum positive correlation was observed...

Spatial patterns of tropical trees and shrubs are important to understanding their interaction and the resultant structure of tropical rainforests. To assess this issue, we took advantage of previously collected data, on Neotropical tree and shrub stem identified to species and mapped for spatial coordinates in a 50ha plot, with a frequency of every five years and over a 20 year period. These s...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS This study analysed the differences in nitrogen (N), non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) and biomass allocation to the roots and shoots of 18 species of Mediterranean dwarf shrubs with different shoot-rooting and resprouting abilities. Root N and NSC concentrations of strict root-sprouters and species resprouting from the base of the stems were also compared. METHODS Solubl...