Abstract
Knowing the determinants of seed germination helps us understand plant adaptive strategies to the environment and predict population and community regeneration under climate change. However, multiple factors, including plant and seed traits that influence germination and their relative importance, have received little attention. Here, seed germination experiments were conducted on newly collected seeds for 89 herbaceous species from salinized Songnen grassland. We tested the effects of multiple phylogeny-related plant traits and seed morphological and physiological traits on germination percentage and initial germination time and their relative contribution to shaping germination variation. We found that biennials had higher germination percentages and rates than annuals and perennials. Species with brown seeds had higher germination percentages than those with yellow and black seeds. Eudicots germinated faster than monocots, and seeds with morphophysiological dormancy required more time to initiate germination than those with other kinds of dormancy. Phylogeny-related factors explained more of the variation in germination than seed traits. Seed mass and volume of the large-seeded, but not small-seeded group species were positively correlated with germination percentage. Our findings provide important information for understanding germination variation across species and local adaptation for species in the salinized Songnen grassland.
Highlights
Seed germination is a critical life history stage that affects population establishment and regeneration (Nonogaki et al, 2010)
We investigated the effects of phylogeny, plant functional type, life form and seed traits, including seed color, mass, volume, dispersal mode, kind of dormancy and seed maturation time on initial germination of newly-collected seeds for 89 common herbaceous species from the salinized Songnen grassland in northeast China
The significant effect of kind of seed dormancy on germination percentage was due to non-dormant species
Summary
Seed germination is a critical life history stage that affects population establishment and regeneration (Nonogaki et al, 2010). The relationships between germination and plant and seed traits will help us understand the plant life history strategies and their adaptation to environments. Monocots and eudicots are two important taxonomic group (Willey and Wilkins, 2008), which may influence germination. Plant functional groups, such as grass, legumes, and forbs, have been widely used to test variable traits and responses under different environments at the community and ecosystem levels (Zhang et al, 2014; Zhang et al, 2017). Plant life form did not show significant effects on germination percentage of 134 common plant species on the eastern Tibetan Plateau (Xu et al, 2014). Bu et al (2008) found that the perennials had a higher germination percentage than the annuals for 633 species in the same Tibetan site
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