Different strategies, shared trajectories: Biomass-allocation scaling during establishment and recovery from disturbance in perennial herbs.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Clonal and non-clonal perennial herbs differ in adult architecture, particularly in the presence of belowground clonal organs. These contrasting strategies may already shape biomass allocation in young plants, potentially constraining growth and recovery from disturbance. We tested whether clonal and non-clonal perennial herbs differ in biomass allocation scaling during establishment and whether disturbance produces persistent changes in these scaling relationships after recovery.

METHODS

We conducted a greenhouse experiment with 31 temperate meadow perennial herbs exposed to five disturbance treatments (two levels of aboveground biomass removal, belowground injury, flooding, and spring frost). Disturbed plants were harvested after approximately three months of recovery. We quantified biomass in major compartments and analysed scaling relationships among them.

KEY

RESULTS

Belowground-aboveground scaling was isometric at the age of two months, shifting weakly toward allometry at the age of five months, with no differences between strategies. After recovery, disturbance did not alter belowground-aboveground, leaf-stem, or generative-aboveground scaling. By contrast, a potential strategy signal emerged in turnover. Dead-aboveground biomass scaling was allometric, differed between clonal and non-clonal herbs, and disturbance reduced this allometry in non-clonals, while leaving it stable in clonals.

CONCLUSIONS

During the first year of life, strategy differences were not evident in biomass allocation scaling among major living compartments, but a potential strategy signal emerged in aboveground turnover. These results suggest that establishment and season-end recovery in perennial herbs proceed within conserved scaling constraints, whereas strategy divergence may first be expressed through tissue turnover and become more apparent later as persistent clonal organs begin to form.