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Comparison of light harvesting and resource allocation strategies between two rhizomatous herbaceous species inhabiting deciduous forests

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Abstract

Light conditions on the floor of deciduous forests are determined by the leaf dynamics of canopy trees and gap formation. Such spatiotemporal variations of light availability should affect the resource partitioning strategies of understory herbs. Although rhizomatous species are common in understory, relationships between rhizome structure, vegetative growth, and sexual reproduction are unclear in terms of carbon allocation. We compared the photosynthetic characteristics and carbon translocation patterns in the under-canopy and light-gap sites between two summer-green perennial species: Cardamine leucantha with an annual long rhizome, and Smilacina japonica with a perennial short rhizome system. Flowering of both species occurs in early summer under decreasing light availability. In the light-gap, C. leucantha maintained high photosynthetic activity due to continuous leaf production, resulting in higher seed production than in the under-canopy. In contrast, the photosynthetic rate of S. japonica, producing leaves simultaneously, decreased with time irrespective of light conditions, resulting in stable seed production in both sites. Although seasonally decreasing light availability commonly restricts carbon assimilation of understory herbs, the responses of resource partitioning to variations in light availability depend greatly on the belowground structure of individual species.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Yoshiaki Kameyama for his discussions on this study. We thank Atsuko Sugimoto and Yumi Hoshino for their assistance with stable isotope analysis, and Asuka Koyama, Tatsuya Saito and Tomohiro Shirasaki for their help with the field survey, and two anonymous reviewers for their critical comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. This work was partly supported by JSPS Research Fellowships of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists and Grants-in-Aid from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science for Scientific Research (nos. 16370007 and 1840501007).

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  1. Graduate School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido University, Kita 10 Nishi 5, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-0810, Japan

    Takashi Y. Ida & Gaku Kudo

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  1. Takashi Y. Ida
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  2. Gaku Kudo
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Correspondence to Takashi Y. Ida.

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Ida, T.Y., Kudo, G. Comparison of light harvesting and resource allocation strategies between two rhizomatous herbaceous species inhabiting deciduous forests. J Plant Res 122, 171–181 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-008-0212-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-008-0212-6

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