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- Title
REGENERATION OF SPHAGNUM.
- Authors
Clymo, R. S.; Duckett, J. G.
- Abstract
When disc-shaped horizontal slices of peat cores, three from a bog in mid-Wales and three from a bog in Hampshire, were kept for several months in a saturated atmosphere in a cool greenhouse numerous new shoots of Sphagnum papillosum (Lindb. S. magellanicum Brid. and S. recurvum P. Beauv. were produced. The new shoots arose on peat discs from at least 30 cm below the surface and water table and from regions in which the Sphagnum appeared to be brown and dead. A timescale, inferred from the cumulative dry mass and the peak in [SUP137]Cs concentration (which was assumed, conservatively, to reflect the 1963 peak influx), indicates that the matrix of the deepest discs from which new shoots arose was from 25 to perhaps 60 years old. Many of the new shoots of Sphagnum arose as innovations from the outer cortex of buried stems. In most cases the first leaves on these had the usual dimorphic leaf cell pattern. Other shoots, which initially produced leaves with monomorphic cells, arose from protonemata, comprising irregularly lobed plates of tissue and sparsely branched filaments with oblique cross-walls. A few of the protonemata arose from old stems, a feature not reported before, but the vast majority had no attachment to old plants and are thought to have grown from spores. Light and air were necessary if new shoots were to appear. But very few innovations or protonemata were found in the green discs from near the surface of the core. This suggests some kind of hormonal control of innovations akin to apical dominance in vascular plants and a more general allelopathic inhibition of spore germination and protonemal growth by green Sphagnum. Fern gametophytes of at least two taxa (Dryopteris-like and Pteridium-like) grew on the peat discs with distribution patterns similar to those of new Sphagnum shoots.
- Subjects
PEAT mosses; PEATLAND ecology; MORPHOGENESIS; PROTONEMATA; MOSSES; FERNS
- Publication
New Phytologist, 1986, Vol 102, Issue 4, p589
- ISSN
0028-646X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1469-8137.1986.tb00834.x