Abstract
Medicinal plant species comprise 21% of the Slovakian native flora. Thirteen species, we focused on, grew at a control site (botanical garden) and three natural sites with different ecological conditions. We described effects of irradiance and soil organic matter content on leaf functional traits, such are specific leaf area and leaf dry matter content. For the formation of plant functional groups according to different leaf characteristics, the metric multidimensional scaling (MDS) ordination diagram was applied. Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) had a more significant effect on studied leaf traits than content of soil organic matter (SOM). Moreover, we studied plasticity of these leaf functional traits and formed plant functional groups based on them. Urtica dioica and Geum urbanum possessed the greatest plasticity of all studied species.
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The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Mrs. Anna Černá and her colleagues at the Garden of Medicinal Plants, Faculty of Pharmacy, Comenius University in Bratislava for their cooperation and provided experimental material for our research. The authors are grateful to Dr. Mária Májeková (Tübingen University, Institute of Evolution and Ecology) for critical reading and improvement of the manuscript.
Funding
This research was funded by the Slovak Scientific Grant Agency VEGA projects No. 1/0712/20 and 2/0096/19.
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Conceptualization, Elena Masarovičová and Ivana Vykouková; methodology, Elena Masarovičová, Ivana Vykouková, Zuzana Kriššáková, Andrej Hrabovský and Malvína Čierniková; formal analysis, Pavel Beracko; investigation, Elena Masarovičová, Ivana Vykouková, Zuzana Kriššáková, Andrej Hrabovský and Malvína Čierniková; resources, Zuzana Kriššáková; data curation, Zuzana Kriššáková; writing – original draft preparation, Zuzana Kriššáková and Elena Masarovičová; writing – review and editing, Zuzana Kriššáková and Malvína Čierniková; visualization, Malvína Čierniková and Pavel Beracko; supervision, Ivana Vykouková and Elena Masarovičová; project administration, Malvína Čierniková; funding acquisition, Malvína Čierniková and Zuzana Kriššáková. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Kriššáková, Z., Čierniková, M., Vykouková, I. et al. Functional traits of medicinal plant species under different ecological conditions. Biologia 78, 925–935 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11756-022-01259-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11756-022-01259-5