Climbing strategy in herbs does not necessarily lead to lower investments into stem biomass
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Climbing strategy in herbs does not necessarily lead to lower investments into stem biomass Adam Klimesˇ
. Lada Klimesˇova´ . Alena Bartusˇkova´ . Jitka Klimesˇova´
Received: 1 June 2020 / Accepted: 5 August 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
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.
Communicated by Anna R. Armitage.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-020-01070-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. A. Klimesˇ (&) J. Klimesˇova´ Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] L. Klimesˇova´ Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia in Cˇeske´ Budeˇjovice, Cˇeske´ Budeˇjovice, Czech Republic A. Klimesˇ A. Bartusˇkova´ J. Klimesˇova´ Department of Functional Ecology, Institute of Botany, Czech Academy of Sciences, Trˇebonˇ, Czech Republic
Keywords Biomass allocation Herbaceous climbers Structural parasitism Supporting function Vines Woody
Introduction The biomass of plants is partitioned among different organs of the plant body and this partitioning follows certain rules resulting from the fact that each plant is a functional unit. The plant functions are ensured by conduit connection from roots through stems to leaves, by mechanical safety and longevity of organs (Enquist
123
Plant Ecol
and Niklas 2002; Poorter et al. 2015). The ratios of organ biomass following from these rules differ between growth forms and taxonomical groups according to their morphological and anatomical co
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