It is often assumed that planted wastewater treatment systems outperform unplanted ones, mainly because plants stimulate belowground microbial population. Yet, fundamental interactions between plants and associated microorganisms remain only partly understood. The aim of our project was to evaluate microbial density and activity associated to the rhizosphere of three plant species. Experimental...

Four weed species (Bromus mollis, Vulpia sp., Poa annua, Steltaria media) occur in 30% or more of all perennial ryegrass seed samples. Of the listed undesirable species, Avena fatua (wild oat) and Hordeum murinum occurred respectively in 5.3 and 3.5% of ryegrass seedlots. Only 6 herbicides are registered for use in grass seed crops in New Zealand, 2 for wild oat, and 4 for broadleaved weeds. Th...

Bioassay techniques are often used to study the effects of allelochemicals on plant processes, and it is generally observed that the processes are stimulated at low allelochemical concentrations and inhibited as the concentrations increase. A simple empirical model is presented to analyze this type of response. The stimulation-inhibition properties of allelochemical-dose responses can be descri...

1 Corresponding author: [email protected]; (608) 238-4673; fax: (608) 262-7509 ABSTRACT: Twelve wet meadows in Dane County, Wisconsin showed vegetation patterns that correlate with hydrologic disturbance and presence of a clonal invasive grass, Phalaris arundinacea L., at two scales, 4500-m2 (0.45 ha) “sites” and 1-m2 plots. Sites with indicators of hydrologic disturbance had lower species rich...

Paper has been made from grasses and other non-wood materials for over 1900 years. Wood is a relatively new papermaking fibre, only 100 years old. Today the commercial non-wood pulp production accounts for 6% of the global pulp production. The main source for the raw material is plants of the Gramineae family. Research on nonwood material has concentrated on grasses like Miscanthus, Phalaris, S...

To quantify the rate of oxidation of tritium gas (referred to as HT) to tritiated water in the environment, various woody and herbaceous plant leaves and roots, mosses and lichens taken from a forest and fields in Ibaraki prefecture, and a forest in Toki, Gifu prefecture, were investigated as to their ability to oxidize atmospheric HT in in vitro experiments. The HT oxidation activity in vegeta...