the ecological characteristics of seed germination and seedling establishment of manglietia patungensis implication for species conservation种子萌发和幼苗建立的生态特征manglietia patungensis物种保护的含义.pdfVIP

American Journal of Plant Sciences, 2012, 3, 1455-1461 1455 /10.4236/ajps.2012.310175 Published Online October 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ajps) The Ecological Characteristics of Seed Germination and Seedling Establishment of Manglietia patungensis : * Implication for Species Conservation Fangqing Chen, Lei Liu, Faju Chen, Guomei Jia Engineering Research Center of the Ministry of Education for the Three Gorges Reservoir Region’s Eco-Environment, The China Three Gorges University, Yichang, China. Email: fqchen@ Received August 13th, 2012; revised September 12th, 2012; accepted September 24th, 2012 ABSTRACT Manglietia patungensis is an endangered species distributed aggregately in evergreen broad-leaved forest communities in Southwest China. A controlling experiment was employed to test the effects of soil type and shade degree on seed germination and seedling establishment by using four soil types and three shade treatments with five replicates. Results showed that the germination rate of M. patungensis seeds was relatively low ranging from 19% to 31%. Shade degree and soil type had no significant effect on seed germination rate, but influenced germination dynamics. Both shade de- gree and soil type treatments significantly affected seedling survival and seedling growth. Seedling survival rate in- creased with increasing light density. Increased light also promoted biomass accumulation and root development of seedlings. The biomass of the seedlings under full light condition increased 72% comparing with the seedlings under 80% shade degree. Root depth, root area and cross number increased with the increase of light density. Seedlings on farmland soil survived better than that on other three kinds