PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 153: Forest Soils and Nutrient Cycling
Friday, August 12, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 514 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Misconceptions on Seasonal Patterns of Root Growth in Woody Plants.
Eissenstat, David*,1, Withington, Jennifer1, Comas, Louise1, Bauerle, Taryn 1, Goebel, Marc1, Lakso, Alan2, 1 Intercollege Graduate Program in Ecology, University Park, PA, USA2 New York State Experiment Station, Geneva, NY, USA
ABSTRACT- In many text books, both in the horticultural and ecological literature, root growth of woody plants is often described as having spring and autumn root flushes. This bimodal pattern of root growth was rarely seen based on multiple years of observation of grape and apple in California, British Columbia and New York. For example, in Fredonia, NY, five years of root investigation in Concord grape indicated considerable variability in timing of root flushes. Root flushes could occur any time between bloom and veraison (grape ripening from green to purple) but were generally not observed after harvest. Wine grapes in the Napa Valley exhibited similar patterns. In apple, root flushes may occur at bloom but often not after harvest. Evergreen and deciduous forest trees also exhibited little root flushing in the fall. Root flushes tended to be mainly in summer months for 11 forest tree species in a common garden study in south-central Poland. We rarely observed root flushes after mid-September in any of the species studied. Our data suggest that the general perception that most temperate woody plants exhibit substantial fall root flushes is in error. Implications of this work to concepts of fall nutrient acquisition may also need to be reconsidered.
Key words: root growth, root phenology, trees, plant physiological ecology