Comparison of the freezing behavior of two liverwort species – Conocephalum salebrosum and Marchantia polymorpha subsp. ruderalis

Abstract

Extracellular ice formation as a dehydrating agent is generally acknowledged as an important element of freezing avoidance in frost hardy plants, preventing the development of lethal ice crystals within living cells. While many reports on extracellular ice formation do exist for vascular plants, not much is known on ice formation for liverworts. In this study, ice formation was studied for two liverwort species occurring in climate zones with winter freezing, Conocephalum salebrosum and Marchanthia polymorpha L. subsp. ruderalis, together with taxon-specific ice nucleating temperature and seasonal concentration of ice nucleating agents. Samples were collected in late autumn from various sites in south west Germany. Afterwards the collected liverwort specimen were cultivated and acclimated in pots in the inner courtyard of the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, Germany. Ice formation was observed in the environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) within the air chambers of both species, with ice crystals growing out of the air chamber pores, as well as random ice crystal formation on various sites on the ventral side for both taxa. The growing ice sheets led to dehydration particularly of the parenchymatous cells. For both taxa, the observations support the relevance of extracellular ice formation for surviving freezing conditions but the experiments also indicate a better adaptation of C. salebrosum to frost.