Growth Responses of Rhizomatous Plants to Fertilizer Application and Interference

Plants of different genet architecture may express predictable growth plasticity in response to resource availability and competition. We carried out two garden experiments in 1985 and 1986 with old-field perennials to test, first, whether fertilizer application increased rhizome number and decreased rhizome length in species with spreading and compact genet architecture, and second, whether the presence of densely rooting competitors decreased rhizome number and increased rhizome length in species with spreading genet architecture and increased rhizome number and decreased rhizome length in species with compact genet architecture (...)