reproductive characteristics of a populus euphratica population and prospects for its restoration in china胡杨种群的生殖特征和其在中国的恢复的前景.pdfVIP

Reproductive Characteristics of a Populus euphratica Population and Prospects for Its Restoration in China 1,2,3 1 2 4,5 4 1 Dechang Cao , Jingwen Li *, Zhenying Huang *, Carol C. Baskin , Jerry M. Baskin , Peng Hao , Weilei Zhou1, Junqing Li1 1 Key Laboratory for Silviculture and Conservation of Ministry of Education, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China, 2 State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 3 Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 4 Department of Biology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, United States of America, 5 Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, United States of America Abstract Populus euphratica is a dominant tree in riparian ecosystems in arid areas of northwest China, but it fails to regenerate in these systems. This study evaluates causes for the failure of sexual and asexual regeneration of this species in the wild. P. euphratica disperses as many as 85743 seeds/m2 during summer, and the seeds germinate to 92.0% in distilled water and to 60.8% on silt. However, very few seeds (3.6%) can germinate on unflooded soil. The seed-rain season is prolonged by temporal variability in seed dispersal among individuals, which ensures that seedling emergence can occur during favorable conditions (i.e., floods and rainfall). As a result of water shortage and river channeling due to water usage and altered river flows, there are no safe sites on river banks for seed germination, which has led to the failure of P. euphratica to regenerate from seed. Root suckers of