Author: Major, J., & Pyott, W. T.
Description: A complete description of a plant community must include the buried viable seeds in the soil. The plants occurring in this form are a part of the flora, which helps to determine the community, even though they are not readily evident. The importance of defining an ecosystem’s flora is reviewed. When the soil’s buried viable seed population is used to help determine the flora, various problems arise since perennial plants reproduce much less abundantly by seed than do annuals, laboratory germination conditions probably do not suit all species, and seeds are not distributed at random so sampling is made difficult. In an investigation of buried viable seeds in two grazed and ungrazed California bunchgrass sites, poor correspondence between vegetation and soil seed populations was found. Numbers were 8000 to 12,000 seeds per m2. Figures of this order or magnitude are general in the periodical literature which describes the buried viable seed populations and the factors which influence them qualitatively and quantitatively in various kinds of arable, mesic pastured or mown, steppe, and forest plant communities.
Subject headings: Seeds; Bunchgrass; Flora; Buried; Plant communities
Publication year: 1966
Journal or book title: Vegetatio
Volume: 13
Issue: 5
Pages: 253–282
Find the full text: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00643329
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Type: Journal article
Serial number: 3103