Zusammenfassung
In central Europe populations of Sesleria albicans (Poaceae) are located in habitats which strongly differ from each other with regard to habitat quality (light, water, nutrients) and land-use (grazing, mowing). Variation among these populations as a result of selection and adaptation to different environments can be supposed. In a common garden experiment we investigated 16 populations of ...
Zusammenfassung
In central Europe populations of Sesleria albicans (Poaceae) are located in habitats which strongly differ from each other with regard to habitat quality (light, water, nutrients) and land-use (grazing, mowing). Variation among these populations as a result of selection and adaptation to different environments can be supposed. In a common garden experiment we investigated 16 populations of Sesleria albicans from natural open habitats (rock faces, rocky ridges) natural closed habitats (beech forests) and anthropogenic open habitats (grazed calcareous grasslands, mown fens) for phenologic and morphometric differentiation. Our investigation revealed that plants from calcareous grasslands flowered and fruited much earlier than plants from fens. Four of 13 morphometric characters showed significant differences among populations. Plants from rock faces had longer leaves and larger tussocks than plants from grazed calcareous grasslands and mown fens. Plants from rock faces showed strongly stretched and plants from fens strongly compressed flowering culms. Plants from fens had the highest number of tillers per tussock. The intraspecific variation of Sesleria albicans is not due to phenotypic plasticity, since it persisted in a common garden experiment, but probably the result of different habitat quality and land use and the concomitant selection. Small size and strong vegetative propagation of plants from calcareous grasslands and fens are probably caused by grazing or mowing and show the powerful influence of land use practices on the intraspecific variation of Sesleria albicans.
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