Rosette Plants Research Articles

Role of plant growth substances in regulating pseudomonocotyly and correlative inhibition in some alpine Himalayan rosettes

Some alpine Himalayan rosette plants (e.g., Aconitum heterophyllum Wall and Podophyllum hexandrum Royle) exhibit the phenomenon of “pseudomonocotyly”, where the plumule remains in a quiescent stage at the base of cotyledonary tube, due to the inhibitory influence of the cotyledons. This correlative inhibition prevents the formation of true leaves and is considered to be an adaptation strategy for seedlings to cope with the prevailing harsh climatic conditions. However, the role of plant growth substances (PGSs) on these processes is not fully understood. This study examines the relative role of PGSs like indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), abscisic acid (ABA), gibberellic acid (GA3) and cytokinin (CK) in the regulation of these processes. The external application of PGSs like GA3 and CK reduced the correlative inhibition, and thus, induced early leaf emergence. Promoting early leaf emergence in such plants has direct implications in nursery raising and conservation of these high value Himalayan medicinal plants.

Effects of water depth on growth of submerged macrophytes <i>Vallisneria natans</i> and <i>Myriophyllum spicatum</i>

水深是影响浅水湖泊沉水植物生长的主要因素之一.莲座型苦草（Vallisneria natans）和冠层型穗花狐尾藻（Myriophyllum spicatum）是我国长江中下游浅水湖泊中常见的沉水植物种类，二者在形态特征上具有较大的差异.在自然水体中，水深变化对这两种植物的生长以及竞争格局的影响还有待研究.本文设计了3个水深梯度（水深0.5、1.5、2.5 m），探讨混栽条件下苦草和穗花狐尾藻生长和竞争格局对水深变化的响应.结果显示在实验系统内，中水深（1.5 m）处理组对两种植物的生长均最有利，表现为两种植物的相对生长率和生物量均最高.低水深（0.5 m）处理组苦草的生物量和相对生长率均显著低于高水深（2.5 m）处理组；穗花狐尾藻则相反，高水深对其生长的抑制作用更大.2种沉水植物在高水深胁迫时均表现出地上部分（叶长或茎长）增加，地下部分（根长）减少的形态响应特征.此外，随着水深由高到低，苦草与穗花狐尾藻生物量之比逐渐减小，表明苦草在两种植物中的竞争优势逐渐降低.研究表明湖泊水深变化不仅能够影响沉水植物的丰度，同时还可能会影响沉水植物的群落结构，而在我国浅水湖泊的生态修复实践中，在通过水位调控恢复沉水植物时，调控范围应考虑目标植物（如苦草）的光合特征.;Water depth is one of the primary factors that affected submerged macrophyte growth. The rosette plant (Vallisneria natans) and canopy plant (Myriophyllum spicatum) are two common submerged macrophyte species in lakes of the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River, China. The two species differ greatly in morphological characteristics. How the fluctuation of water depth could affect their growth and their competitive patterns remains to be studied. In this study, three water depth levels (0.5 m, 1.5 m and 2.5 m) were established to explore the responses of growth and competitive patterns of the two plant species to water depth under the condition of mixed planting. Our results showed that both macrophyte species favored in moderate water depth (1.5 m) environment, with highest values of plant biomass and relative growth rate (RGR) in this water depth. The biomass and RGR of V. natans in low water depth treatment (0.5 m) were significantly lower than that in high water depth treatment (2.5 m). However, the opposite pattern was observed in M. spicatum, high water depth treatment has a greater repression effect on its growth. The two species showed the similar responses in morphology, with the indictors of the aboveground part (leaf length or shoot length) increased and that of the underground parts (root length) decreased under the stress of high water depth. Moreover, the biomass ratios of V. natans to M. spicatum are gradually reduced with the water depth, indicated that the competitive advantage of V. natans were increased with water depth. Our study indicates that water depth fluctuations in lakes may affect not only the abundance of submerged macrophytes, but also their community structure. In restoration of shallow lakes, our study suggests that the photosynthetic characteristics of the key species (such as V. natans) should be fully considered when adjusting water levels to rebuild submerged macrophytes.

Circadian leaf movements facilitate overtopping of neighbors

Many plants exhibit circadian clock-driven leaf movements whereby the leaves are raised during the day to achieve a relatively high angle during the evening, before lowering late in the night. Such leaf movements were first recorded over 2000 years ago but there is still much debate as to their purpose. We investigated whether such leaf movements within Arabidopsis, a ruderal rosette plant, can aid in overtopping leaves of neighboring plants. Wild type and circadian clock mutant plants were grown in an alternating grid system so that their leaves would meet as the plants grew. Experiments were performed using day lengths that matched the endogenous rhythm of either wild type or mutant. Plants grown in a day length shorter than their endogenous rhythm were consistently overtopped by plants which were in synchrony with the day night cycle, demonstrating a clear overtopping advantage resulting from circadian leaf movement rhythms. Furthermore, we found that this leaf overtopping as a result of correctly synchronized circadian leaf movements is additive to leaf overtopping due to shade avoidance. Curiously, this did not apply to plants grown in a day length longer than their endogenous period. Plants grown in a day length longer than their endogenous period were able to adapt their leaf rhythms and suffered no overtopping disadvantage. Crucially, our results show that, in a context-dependent manner, circadian clock-driven leaf movements in resonance with the external light/dark cycle can facilitate overtopping of the leaves of neighboring plants.

Image based leaf segmentation and counting in rosette plants

This paper proposes an efficient method to extract the leaf region and count the number of leaves in digital plant images. The plant image analysis plays a significant role in viable and productive agriculture. It is used to record the plant growth, plant yield, chlorophyll fluorescence, plant width and tallness, leaf area, etc. frequently and accurately. Plant growth is a major character to be analyzed among these plant characters and it directly depends on the number of leaves in the plants. In this paper, a new method is presented for leaf region extraction from plant images and counting the number of leaves. The proposed method has three steps. The first step involves a new statistical based technique for image enhancement. The second step involves in the extraction of leaf region in plant image using a graph based method. The third step involves in counting the number of leaves in the plant image by applying Circular Hough Transform (CHT). The proposed work has been experimented on benchmark datasets of Leaf Segmentation Challenge (LSC). The proposed method achieves the segmentation accuracy of 95.4% and it also achieves the counting accuracy of −0.7 (DiC) and 2.3 (|DiC|) for datasets (A1, A2 and A3), which are better than the state-of-the-art methods.

Coupled UV-exposure and microbial decomposition improves measures of organic matter degradation and light models in humic lake

Increasing terrestrial input of colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) to temperate softwater lakes has reduced transparency, distribution of pristine rosette plants and overall biodiversity in recent decades. We examined microbial and UV-induced reduction of absorption by CDOM and dissolved organic carbon pools (DOC) in humic water from a groundwater-fed softwater lake as well as groundwater received from surrounding heathland and coniferous forest. An experimental setup that mimics naturally coupled continuous UV-exposure and microbial degradation was introduced and compared with experiments applying a single initial or no UV-exposure. We found that decreases of CDOM and DOC concentrations were negligible in groundwater and very small in lake water over 30 days in the absence of UV-exposure. Initial UV-exposure increased degradation rates, but further degradation ceased after 20 days preventing determination of the natural time course of degradation. Coupled continuous UV-exposure and microbial degradation showed high and constant degradation of CDOM (340 nm) over 30 days removing 87% of the initial absorption in heathland groundwater, and 20% in forest groundwater and lake water. Declines in DOC concentrations over 30 days were 34%, 28% and 13% of the initial levels in heathland groundwater, forest groundwater and lake water, respectively. Model estimates showed that a shift in land use from a forest dominated to a heathland dominated catchment could increase lake transparency from 0.6 to 2.5 m. and expand plant-covered area from 3 to 35%. The main time delay to a new steady state of better light climate would be degradation of soil organic pools and exchange of groundwater magazines, while the delay in the lake water after a complete shift to inflow of CDOM-poorer groundwater would last only 1–2 years. Consequently, changes in CDOM levels in groundwater input should have relatively rapid and marked influence on light conditions and plant distribution in shallow softwater lakes.

The use of plant models in deep learning: an application to leaf counting in rosette plants

Deep learning presents many opportunities for image-based plant phenotyping. Here we consider the capability of deep convolutional neural networks to perform the leaf counting task. Deep learning techniques typically require large and diverse datasets to learn generalizable models without providing a priori an engineered algorithm for performing the task. This requirement is challenging, however, for applications in the plant phenotyping field, where available datasets are often small and the costs associated with generating new data are high. In this work we propose a new method for augmenting plant phenotyping datasets using rendered images of synthetic plants. We demonstrate that the use of high-quality 3D synthetic plants to augment a dataset can improve performance on the leaf counting task. We also show that the ability of the model to generate an arbitrary distribution of phenotypes mitigates the problem of dataset shift when training and testing on different datasets. Finally, we show that real and synthetic plants are significantly interchangeable when training a neural network on the leaf counting task.

An ultraviolet B condition that affects growth and defense in Arabidopsis

Ultraviolet B light (UV-B, 280–315 nm) is the shortest wavelength of the solar spectrum reaching the surface of the Earth. It has profound effects on plants, ranging from growth regulation to severe metabolic changes. Low level UV-B mainly causes photomorphogenic effects while higher levels can induce stress, yet these effects tend to overlap. Here we identified a condition that allows growth reduction without obvious detrimental stress in wild type Arabidopsis rosette plants. This condition was used to study the effects of a daily UV-B dose on plant characteristics of UV-B adapted plants in detail. Exploration of the transcriptome of developing leaves indicated downregulation of genes involved in stomata formation by UV-B, while at the same time genes involved in photoprotective pigment biosynthesis were upregulated. These findings correspond with a decreased stomatal density and increased UV-B absorbing pigments. Gene ontology analysis revealed upregulation of defense related genes and meta-analysis showed substantial overlap of the UV-B regulated transcriptome with transcriptomes of salicylate and jasmonate treated as well as herbivore exposed plants. Feeding experiments showed that caterpillars of Spodoptera littoralis are directly affected by UV-B, while performance of the aphid Myzus persicae is diminished by a plant mediated process.

Espeletia giant rosette plants are reliable biological indicators of time since fire in Andean grasslands

Paramo grasslands in the tropical Andes are fire-prone ecosystems and an understanding of their fire ecology is fundamental to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management. Fire registers are normally impractical in these remote, cloud-covered landscapes, but Espeletia giant rosette plants have been proposed as biological indicators of time since fire in paramos. Espeletia giant stem rosettes tolerate fire well, protecting apical buds in at the heart of their leaf rosettes, and for some species, germination is known to be enhanced by fire. As the plant grows, its dead leaves remain attached to the stem, but fire removes these and resets the “leaf clock”. This study uses a unique register of fires in one Ecuadorian paramo to assess the robustness of this biological indicator. Dead leaf cover on Espeletia pycnophylla giant rosette plants was measured in fifteen different sites with known fire dates from 2000 to 2014. The growth rates of plants at four different elevations were measured over a 2-year period and used to estimate time since fire based on dead leaf cover in the known sites. Estimates were accurate to ± 2 year. Thus, where fire records are missing, relatively easy measurements of growth rates and dead leaf cover of Espeletia giant rosette plants can provide reliable estimates across a wide range of times since fire. This approach has value for direct investigations into fire ecology but also for studies in which controlling for fire dynamics is necessary to reveal underlying patterns. Therefore, this approach also offers a means to obtain better information on other landscape-scale processes such as the impact of climate change on biodiversity or the provision of ecosystem services.

Plant functional type approach for a functional interpretation of altitudinal vegetation zones in the Alborz Mts., Iran

Mountains are an excellent system for evaluating ecological and biogeographical patterns. The obvious variations of the environmental factors along the altitude create different zones with adapted plant assemblages. However, few studies make use of plant functional type (PFT) for describing the variation of vegetation along altitudinal gradients. A PFT is a group of taxa with similar traits which respond similarly to the environmental gradients. In this study, we used PFTs as indicators describing five vegetation zones in the western Alborz Mt, Iran from 2000 – 4500 m. The plant trait data presented here covers six plant traits including growth form, stem-leaf ratio, spinescence, hairiness, leaf consistency and plant height of 297 species. We considered altitude and soil factors to test the importance of environmental variables. We applied a multivariate analysis of three table ordination, i.e. environmental, species, and traits data to identify the PFTs. We further applied fourth-corner statistic to quantify trait-environment relationships. A constrained hierarchical clustering was used to detect five altitudinal zones and two zones of low and high nitrogen concentration. With regard to altitude we discuss the distribution of species, traits and PFTs. Growth form, plant height and stem-leaf ratio were significantly related to altitude and nitrogen. We identified 19 PFTs from which 18 were significantly associated to one or more altitudinal zones. While the lower altitudinal zones contain a variety of PFTs higher altitudes contain less PFTs with the highest altitude containing only one single PFT, tiny rosette plants with soft mesomorphic leaves. We identified grazing and climatic harshness as well as rockiness as the most important drivers of the distribution of plant functional traits and types across the studied gradient.

Organs topology in strawberry plants depending on different nursery systems

Strawberry plant architecture shows some constant features related to its sympodial growth. Variability in plant architecture is related to the position of the vegetative and reproductive structures along its short axis (rosette plant) and is determined by many factors, including abiotic, agronomic, nutritional and environmental factors. Propagation technique provides plant types showing different architectures. Each type of plant is suitable for specific growing cycles. Plants from different nursery cultivation systems were dissected to determine the fate of all the meristems before field cultivation. Branching pattern and organs topology were described in order to provide basic information on the developmental ability of the plants. The study shows that using specific propagation techniques, it may be possible to guide the architecture of the strawberry plants towards different number and distribution of axillary shoots, inflorescences and stolons.

Time of Monitoring Influences Detectability and Demographic Estimates of the Threatened Perennial Spalding's Catchfly (Silene spaldingii S. Watson)

Abstract. The Threatened plant Spalding's catchfly (Silene spaldingii S.Watson) is known to exhibit prolonged dormancy in which individuals survive belowground for one or more years; detection of all aboveground plants is essential for accurate estimates of prolonged dormancy. We conducted 2 long-term demographic studies of Spalding's catchfly in west central Idaho (2002–2013), following 947 plants in permanent plots for 10 consecutive years. To detect all plants emerging aboveground, we monitored twice each growing season—soon after emergence and at flowering—and searched closely for small, inconspicuous stages. Demographic estimates were based on stage-based transition matrix and mark—recapture analyses. Over 99% of aboveground plants were present and detectable at early monitoring; approximately one-third were rosette plants, most of which represented established plants present in previous years. Annual dormancy was approximately 10%. Detectability declined considerably by flowering (time dependent) an...

Daily changes in VPD during leaf development in high air humidity increase the stomatal responsiveness to darkness and dry air

Previous studies have shown that plants developed under high relative air humidity (RH>85%) develop malfunctioning stomata and therefor have increased transpiration and reduced desiccation tolerance when transferred to lower RH conditions and darkness. In this study, plants developed at high RH were exposed to daily VPD fluctuations created by changes in temperature and/or RH to evaluate the potential improvements in stomatal functioning. Daily periods with an 11°C temperature increase and consequently a VPD increase (vpd: 0.36–2.37KPa) reduced the stomatal apertures and improved the stomatal functionality and desiccation tolerance of the rosette plant Arabidopsis thaliana. A similar experiment was performed with only a 4°C temperature increase and/or a RH decrease on tomato. The results showed that a daily change in VPD (vpd: 0.36–1.43KPa) also resulted in improved stomatal responsiveness and decreased water usage during growth. In tomato, the most effective treatment to increase the stomatal responsiveness to darkness as a signal for closure was daily changes in RH without a temperature increase.

Good-bye to tropical alpine plant giants under warmer climates? Loss of range and genetic diversity in Lobelia rhynchopetalum.

The main aim of this paper is to address consequences of climate warming on loss of habitat and genetic diversity in the enigmatic tropical alpine giant rosette plants using the Ethiopian endemic Lobelia rhynchopetalum as a model. We modeled the habitat suitability of L. rhynchopetalum and assessed how its range is affected under two climate models and four emission scenarios. We used three statistical algorithms calibrated to represent two different complexity levels of the response. We analyzed genetic diversity using amplified fragment length polymorphisms and assessed the impact of the projected range loss. Under all model and scenario combinations and consistent across algorithms and complexity levels, this afro‐alpine flagship species faces massive range reduction. Only 3.4% of its habitat seems to remain suitable on average by 2,080, resulting in loss of 82% (CI 75%–87%) of its genetic diversity. The remaining suitable habitat is projected to be fragmented among and reduced to four mountain peaks, further deteriorating the probability of long‐term sustainability of viable populations. Because of the similar morphological and physiological traits developed through convergent evolution by tropical alpine giant rosette plants in response to diurnal freeze‐thaw cycles, they most likely respond to climate change in a similar way as our study species. We conclude that specialized high‐alpine giant rosette plants, such as L. rhynchopetalum, are likely to face very high risk of extinction following climate warming.

Finely-grained annotated datasets for image-based plant phenotyping

Image-based approaches to plant phenotyping are gaining momentum providing fertile ground for several interesting vision tasks where fine-grained categorization is necessary, such as leaf segmentation among a variety of cultivars, and cultivar (or mutant) identification. However, benchmark data focusing on typical imaging situations and vision tasks are still lacking, making it difficult to compare existing methodologies. This paper describes a collection of benchmark datasets of raw and annotated top-view color images of rosette plants. We briefly describe plant material, imaging setup and procedures for different experiments: one with various cultivars of Arabidopsis and one with tobacco undergoing different treatments. We proceed to define a set of computer vision and classification tasks and provide accompanying datasets and annotations based on our raw data. We describe the annotation process performed by experts and discuss appropriate evaluation criteria. We also offer exemplary use cases and results on some tasks obtained with parts of these data. We hope with the release of this rigorous dataset collection to invigorate the development of algorithms in the context of plant phenotyping but also provide new interesting datasets for the general computer vision community to experiment on. Data are publicly available at http://www.plant-phenotyping.org/datasets.

Growth Signatures of Rosette Plants from Time-Lapse Video.

Plant growth is a dynamic process, and the precise course of events during early plant development is of major interest for plant research. In this work, we investigate the growth of rosette plants by processing time-lapse videos of growing plants, where we use Nicotiana tabacum (tobacco) as a model plant. In each frame of the video sequences, potential leaves are detected using a leaf-shape model. These detections are prone to errors due to the complex shape of plants and their changing appearance in the image, depending on leaf movement, leaf growth, and illumination conditions. To cope with this problem, we employ a novel graph-based tracking algorithm which can bridge gaps in the sequence by linking leaf detections across a range of neighboring frames. We use the overlap of fitted leaf models as a pairwise similarity measure, and forbid graph edges that would link leaf detections within a single frame. We tested the method on a set of tobacco-plant growth sequences, and could track the first leaves of the plant, including partially or temporarily occluded ones, along complete sequences, demonstrating the applicability of the method to automatic plant growth analysis. All seedlings displayed approximately the same growth behavior, and a characteristic growth signature was found.

Biomorphological adaptations of helophytes

Nine species of helophytes are described using a systematic approach: Alisma plantago-aquatica, Butomus umbellatus, Sagittaria sagittifolia, Sparganium emersum, Glyceria maxima, Phragmites australis, Scirpus lacustris, Typha latifolia, and T. angustifolia. The species are divided into four groups according to their characteristics: monopodial rosette plants with a short rhizome, sympodial semirosellate plants with a short rhizome, sympodial semirosellate tuberous plants, and sympodial plants with a long rhizome. It is determined that seed individuals and vegetative descendants of polycarpic plants tend to become short-lived. This trend is implemented in different ways.

High resistance of oligotrophic isoetid plants to oxic and anoxic dark exposure

Summary Small rosette plants in oligotrophic, softwater lakes, such as Lobelia dortmanna and Littorella uniflora, have highly permeable root surfaces that allow acquisition of CO2 from the sediment for photosynthesis. In the absence of an oxygen supply from photosynthesis, these permeable roots increase the risk that the plants are deprived of oxygen when sediments turn anoxic at night, or more permanently if there is organic enrichment. We hypothesised that isoetids, despite their preference for pristine, well‐oxygenated habitats, should be relatively tolerant to tissue anoxia and that L. dortmanna should be more tolerant than L. uniflora because the impermeable leaf surfaces of L. dortmanna prevent the entry of oxygen from aerated lake waters and generate higher risks of anoxia in plant tissues at night. Metabolism, survival and subsequent growth of both species were unaffected by darkness under oxic conditions for 8 days at 20 °C. All L. dortmanna individuals and 60% of L. uniflora individuals survived exposure to anoxic water in the dark for 5 days. Anoxia reduced respiration during exposure, depressed the quantum efficiency of Photosystem (PS) II immediately after anoxic exposure and reduced growth during a 24‐day recovery phase. Plant growth under recovery declined with increasing length of anoxia from 2 to 8 days, and L. uniflora was more affected than L. dortmanna. Overall, the two species were very tolerant to oxic, dark exposure and also survived prolonged anoxia, probably because of inherently low respiratory maintenance costs. Lower metabolism of L. dortmanna than L. uniflora probably contributes to its higher tolerance to tissue anoxia, while higher leaf permeability to oxygen uptake from the water may help L. uniflora to survive recurrent sediment anoxia at night during summer.

Biological Flora of the British Isles: Crambe maritima

Summary This account presents information on all aspects of the biology of Crambe maritima L. (Sea‐kale; Crambe pontica Stev. ex Rupr) that are relevant to understand its ecological characteristics and behaviour. The main topics are presented within the standard framework of the Biological Flora of the British Isles: distribution, habitat, communities, responses to biotic factors, responses to environment, structure and physiology, phenology, floral and seed characters, herbivores and disease, history and conservation. Crambe maritima is found predominantly on southern and western coasts of Britain but also in Scotland, Ireland and elsewhere. It occurs primarily on neutral or slightly alkaline soils on shingle and sand beaches above the drift line, out of reach of average high tides. Equinoctial tides or storms can increase soil salinity, requiring it to be salt tolerant. Crambe maritima is a rosette plant with a fleshy taproot, which is the main perennating organ with a capacity for vegetative propagation. Flowering can take 5–8 years when grown from seeds. Reproduction is predominantly by seeds. Root and stem cuttings can be used for vegetative propagation. In winter, each branch ends at ground level in a leafless crimson bud, and in spring, it produces a succession of cabbage‐like leaves just above ground level, the first being purple and successive leaves becoming greener. Crambe maritima produces weakly protogynous hermaphrodite flowers. Self‐ and cross‐pollination occurs. Pollination is by insects, flies and bees. The plants usually produce 1000–10 000 seeds per year. In Britain, Crambe maritima has been reported to have declined in certain areas but increased in other areas and currently does not have rare or scarce status. There has been an expansion in range in Ireland since the 1960s as it has been recorded at new sites, and while the species has disappeared from some sites in France, it has also been identified in several new sites.

Importance of molehill disturbances for invasion by Bunias orientalis in meadows and pastures

Small-scale soil disturbances by fossorial animals can change physical and biotic conditions in disturbed patches and influence spatial and temporal dynamics, and the composition of plant communities. They create regeneration niches and colonization openings for native plants and, according to the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, they are expected to increase plant community diversity. However, it also has been reported that increased disturbance resource availability and decreased competition with native species may result in the invasion of communities by alien plant species, as predicted by the fluctuating resources theory of invasibility. In this study, we investigated the importance of European mole disturbances for the invasion of semi-natural fresh meadows and pastures by the alien plant, Bunias orientalis, which has mainly spread throughout Central Europe on anthropogenically disturbed sites. We hypothesized that the invader, being particularly well adapted to anthropogenic disturbances, enters into dense vegetation of meadows and pastures mainly on mole mounds. To assess the seedling recruitment of B. orientalis in relation to disturbance, we counted the number of seedlings that emerged on molehills and control plots in meadows and pastures. The establishment of juvenile (0–1 year) rosette plants on and off molehills was surveyed on 5 × 5 m plots. In accordance with our hypothesis, mole disturbances were found to serve as a gateway for B. orientalis by which the invader may colonize semi-natural grasslands. The seedlings of the species emerged almost solely on molehills and the young rosettes were established predominantly on mole mounds. Although the seedling density did not differ significantly between the meadows and pastures, the number of established plants in the pastures was considerably higher. We suggest that the invasion by B. orientalis in pastures may be facilitated by vegetative regeneration following root fragmentation by sheep pasturing.

The response of simulated grassland communities to the cessation of grazing

Changes in land-use are supposed to be among the severest prospective threats to plant diversity world-wide. In semi-natural temperate grasslands, the cessation of traditional land use like livestock grazing is considered to be one of the most important drivers of the diversity loss witnessed within the last decades. Despite of the enormous number of studies on successional pathways following grazing abandonment there is no general pattern of how grassland communities are affected in terms of diversity, trait composition and pace of succession. To gain a comprehensive picture is difficult given the heterogeneity of environments and the time and effort needed for long-term investigations. We here use a proven individual- and trait-based grassland community model to analyze short- and long-term consequences of grazing abandonment under different assumptions of resource availability, pre-abandonment grazing intensity and regional isolation of communities.Grazing abandonment led to a decrease of plant functional type (PFT) diversity in all but two scenarios in the long-term. In short-term we also found an increase or no change in Shannon diversity for several scenarios. With grazing abandonment we overall found an increase in maximum plant mass, clonal integration and longer lateral spread, a decrease in rosette plant types and in stress tolerant plants, as well as an increase in grazing tolerant and a decrease in grazing avoiding plant types. Observed changes were highly dependent on the regional configuration of communities, prevalent resource conditions and land use intensity before abandonment. While long-term changes took around 10–20 years in resource rich conditions, new equilibria established in resource poor conditions only after 30–40 years.Our results confirm the potential threats caused by recent land-use changes and the assumption that oligotrophic communities are more resistant than mesotrophic communities also for long-term abandonment. Moreover, results revealed that species-rich systems are not per se more resistant than species-poor grasslands.