Plants adapted to cold winters go through annual cycles of gain followed by loss of freezing tolerance (cold acclimation and deacclimation). Warm spells during winter and early spring can cause deacclimation, and if temperatures drop, freezing damage may occur. Many plants are vernalized during winter, a process making them competent to flower in the following summer. In winter cereals, a coinc...

Analyses of ribosomal ITS and chloroplast trnL-F sequences provide phylogenetic reconstruction for the festucoids (Poeae: Loliinae), a group of temperate grasses with morphological and molecular affinities to the large genus Festuca. Parsimony and Bayesian analyses of the combined ITS/trnL-F dataset show Loliinae to be monophyletic but unresolved for a weakly supported clade of 'broad-leaved Fe...

1. To study the potential for complementarity in nitrogen acquisition from different soil depths, we injected an isotope tracer ( 15 NH 4 Cl) at 5 and 20 cm depths in plant communities containing Achillea millefolium L. and Festuca ovina L. or Phleum pratense L. and Trifolium pratense L. in monocultures and two-species mixtures. 2. In monoculture, Festuca and Phleum took up tracer at 5 and 20 c...

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...

Tillering is defined as the process of above-ground shoot production by a single plant. The number of grass tillers is one of the most important parameters in ecology and breeding studies. The number of tillers is usually determined by manually counting the separated shoots from a single plant. Unfortunately, this method is too time-consuming. In this study, a new method for counting grass till...

The nutritive value of manganese and its occurrence in animal and plant tissue has received considerable attention within the last few years. The literature relating to manganese in plant tissue has been reviewed by Lindow and Peterson (^)^, who reported analyses of 84 samples representing the principal classes of human foods. In a later paper by Skinner and Peterson {12), analyses of 54 feedin...