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Climbing strategy in herbs does not necessarily lead to lower investments into stem biomass

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Abstract

Herbaceous climbers (vines) represent a growth strategy in which the stem lacks most of its supporting function. This has led to the hypothesis that herbaceous climbers are structural parasites that invest less into stems than self-supporting plants. So far, the support for this idea has been ambiguous, as woody and herbaceous plants have been discussed jointly and evidence is often based on young plants in pot experiments. We collected in wild fully grown temperate herbaceous climbers and self-supporting herbs to examine the idea. We made a phylogenetically informed comparison of biomass allocation into stems and leaves of 16 climber species and 74 self-supporting herbs. Furthermore, we compared our results with those published for woody climbers to gain insight into different biomass allocation between herbaceous and woody growth forms. We found that herbaceous climbers and self-supporting herbs do not differ in their proportion of stem biomass to leaf biomass. Herbaceous climbers reach much higher in the canopy thanks to their climbing habit and in average more than seven times longer stems, but contrary to the expectation and unlike their woody counterparts, they do not save on investment into the stem. Herbaceous climbers and self-supporting herbs represent a study system which provides insight into biomass scaling with versus without supporting function where both stems as well as leaves are seasonal.

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Data availability

The dataset generated during the current study is available as part of the Supporting information.

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Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Dennis Whigham for his generous support of part of the research conducted at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland. We also thank Tomáš Herben, Patrik Mráz, Ladislava Paštová and Eva Horčičková and two anonymous reviewers who kindly provided comments on this article, and Fred Rooks and Jan W. Jongepier for linguistic assistance. Our research was supported by the Czech Science Foundation [GA16-19245S, GA19-13231S].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    Adam Klimeš & Jitka Klimešová

  2. Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Lada Klimešová

  3. Department of Functional Ecology, Institute of Botany, Czech Academy of Sciences, Třeboň, Czech Republic

    Adam Klimeš, Alena Bartušková & Jitka Klimešová

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  1. Adam Klimeš
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  2. Lada Klimešová
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  4. Jitka Klimešová
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JK planned and designed the research. LK did fieldwork with assistance of other authors. AK analysed the data and wrote the manuscript using all other authors’ contributions.

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Correspondence to Adam Klimeš.

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Communicated by Anna R. Armitage.

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Klimeš, A., Klimešová, L., Bartušková, A. et al. Climbing strategy in herbs does not necessarily lead to lower investments into stem biomass. Plant Ecol 221, 1159–1166 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-020-01070-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-020-01070-9

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