The effect of nutrient availability on biomass allocation patterns in 27 species of herbaceous plants

We investigated allocation to roots, stems and leaves of 27 species of herbaceous clonal plants grown at two nutrient levels. Allocation was analyzed as biomass ratios and also allometrically. As in other studies, the fraction of biomass in stems and, to a lesser extent, in leaves, was usually higher in the high-nutrient treatment than in the low-nutrient treatment, and the fraction of biomass in roots was usually higher under low-nutrient conditions. The relationship between the biomass of plant structures fits the general allometric equation, with an exponent ≠ 1 in most of the species. The different biomass ratios under the two nutrient conditions represented points on simple allometric trajectories, indicating that natural selection has resulted in allometric strategies rather than plastic responses to nutrient level. In other words, in most of the species that changed allocation in response to the nutrient treatment, these changes were largely a consequence of plant size. Our data suggest that some allocation patterns that have been interpreted as plastic responses to different resource availabilities may be more parsimoniously explained as allometric strategies.