Exotic grasses are becoming increasingly abundant in Neotropical savannas, with Melinis minutiflora Beauv. being particularly invasive.To better understand the consequences for the native flora, we performed a field study to test the effect of this species on the establishment, survival and growth of seedlings of seven tree species native to the savannas and forests of the Cerrado region of Bra...

In grasses, food reserves in crowns and rhizomes support herbage production and allow regrowth in the spring. One important factor leading to the relative competitiveness of Kentucky bluegrass and smooth brome is that they initiate spring regrowth earlier than their native counterparts in the mixed-grass prairie. It still remains to be tested if there is a greater biomass investment to crowns o...

Non-native plants are invading terrestrial ecosystems across the globe, yet little is known about how invasions impact carbon (C) cycling or how these impacts will be influenced by climate change. We quantified the effect of a non-native C4 grass invasion on soil C pools and fluxes in a Hawaiian tropical dry forest over 2 years in which annual precipitation was average (Year 1) and 60% higher t...

49 Early emergence of plant seedlings can offer strong competitive advantages over 50 later-germinating neighbors through the preemption of limiting resources. This 51 phenomenon may have contributed to the persistent dominance of European annual 52 grasses over native perennial grasses in California grasslands, since the former 53 species typically germinate earlier in the growing season than ...

1. Restoration of semi-arid shrub ecosystems often requires control of invasive grasses but the effects of these grass-control treatments on native and exotic forbs have not been investigated adequately to assess long-term stability. In southern California, coastal sage scrub (CSS) vegetation is one semi-arid shrub community that has been invaded extensively by both exotic grasses and exotic fo...

twenty accessions of cultivated grass pea (lathyrus sativus l.) and wild species of lathyrus l.collected from western and southern regions of iran were evaluated for their mitotic metaphase chromosomalcharacteristics. all populations comprising 16 populations of cultivated l. sativus and 4 wild populations oflathyrus l. were diploid, 2n=2x=14 chromosomes. there were significant variations among...

warm-season bunch grass native to the eastern United States and is still often found east of Kansas and Oklahoma. This highly productive grass is best adapted to wet habitats; and remnant colonies are commonly found in flood plains and along stream banks. Eastern gamagrass is a relative of field corn (Zea mays) and is characterized by numerous short, well-developed rhizomes. Lower culm internod...

abstract the lack of water is the most important problem in extensive landscape especially turfgrass in arid and semi arid regions. the root responses in native and commercial grasses under drought stress were investigated. this experiment was in a factorial experiment based on unbalanced completely random design on the year 2006. the specious that we used in this experiment included (i) commer...

Comparative studies of plant resource use and ecophysiological traits of invasive and native resident plant species can elucidate mechanisms of invasion success and ecosystem impacts. In the seasonal tropics of north Australia, the alien C4 perennial grass Andropogon gayanus (gamba grass) has transformed diverse, mixed tree-grass savanna ecosystems into dense monocultures. To better understand ...