Growth and Survival of Plants in the Arctic

INTRODUCTION CERTAIN types of arctic and alpine climates tend to allow the development of open associations of plants, which have been called by Warming. In these associations the adults live for a great length of time and appear to be healthy and grow to a large size, often producing abundant flowers and fertile seeds. It is clear the climate is such the plant species can flourish, so it is curious in the course of time these areas should not have developed a closed association. The work to be described was done in an endeavour to obtain some evidence of the factors responsible for this state of affairs. Warming (1909) states develops wherever the temperature of the warmest month does not exceed 6? C., and further says that there is evidently some connexion between the temperature and the density of the vegetation. Such statements are of a purely descriptive nature and are obviously only true given a large number of other suitable environmental factors. In 1932 I spent the summer on the east coast of Greenland,1 and noticed in the there appeared to be a large number of seedlings and young plants present in comparison with the number of adults, and concluded the factor preventing further colonization might be found in some condition which was damaging to the survival of seedlings. During a year2 spent in East Greenland at Kangerdlugssuak (lat. 68? 30') I collected data on this question of seedling survival and growth rate in an endeavour to find the causes producing the static open association of the fjaeldmark . A general point with regard to the colonization of the in the area investigated is there is no preliminary growth of lichens and mosses before of the flowering plants. Where no flowering plants are growing the earth surface is bare, and mosses are not common except near streams, or in places where the soil is very wet in the spring and early summer. Lichens are almost restricted to small encrusting forms on the larger stones. These observations apply both to the coastal regions and also to the Nunataks far inland near to the ice cap. Hence questions of competition with lower plants do not arise.