Morphological And Reproductive Adaptation Of Arundinella Hirta And Salix Variegata To Flooding

Flooding-tolerant terrestrial plants will take morphological, anatomical structural and physiological strategies to fit flooding environment. Through field observation and investigation and laboratory cultivation experiments on two terrestrial plants, Salix variegata and Arundinella hirta, we studied the morphological and reproductive characteristics of these two plants which grow in a seasonal flooding environment. The analyses are as follows:Under submerged condition, Salix variegata has a trend to elongate their leaves' length and width, but not significantly compared with those of the leaves of non-submerged individuals in a particular time. Under submerged condition, their stems were also elongated, which are mainly caused by the elongation of internodes that is relevant to the stem age. And the stem's apical dominance reduced and lateral branches were promoted in submergence situation.Sexual reproduction of A. hirta was affected by the flooding in natural environment. The seed number, seed weight of each individual and kilo-grain weight decreased with the intensity of flooding, while within a certain degree of flooding stress, ramet number and individual dry weight increased with the intensity of flooding. This suggests that flooding weaken their sexual reproduction and promoted their asexual reproduction. In other words, asexual reproduction was less impacted by flooding than sexual reproduction by flooding and was more suitable to flooding-disturbed environment.Tillers (descendents of asexual reproduction, DAs) and seedlings (descendents of sexual reproduction, DSs) of A. hirta were cultured in the same condition. Their life...