Application of herb chronology: Annual fertilization and climate reveal annual ring signatures within the roots of US tallgrass prairie plants

Abstract

The relatively new field of herbaceous root chronology (“herb chronology”) uses the annual rings of secondary xylem in roots of perennial forbs to analyze belowground secondary growth as a function of annual growth environment. By using three tallgrass forb species from long-term experiments within Konza prairie of northeastern Kansas (USA), we aimed to find the effects of fertilization, growing season temperature, and precipitation on annual secondary growth. For two of the three species, we found annual rings were significantly larger among plots that were fertilized annually with phosphorus or nitrogen + phosphorus in contrast to unfertilized control plots. Rings also had significant variation with climatic variables. We found a consistent negative correlation with early season temperature for each species. However, early growing season precipitation proved to be far less consistent, with positive correlations only found in a few cases between species. Overall, we conclude that annual rings in these select tallgrass prairie species may not carry reliable climatic signatures; rather site-specific ecological factors, such as aboveground competition with neighbors, may be more important for annual ring patterns. In our discussion we propose a framework to help better disentangle the effects of site or climatic factors that may affect herbaceous annual ring variation.