PJB-2017-238
THE ALLELOPATHIC POTENTIAL OF OXALIS RUBRA ON SEEDLINGS OF VERONICA PERSICA UNDER DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTS
CAN DAI, WEN-JIE LUO, KUO LIAO, ZHONG-QIANG LI, JING PANG AND ZHENG-XIANG WANG
Abstract
Allelopathy is an important ecological mechanism in nature, which is extensively investigated and acknowledged as an innate characteristic. Less is known how the direction and strength of allelopathy may change with different environments in living plants. We studied the allelopathic potential of Oxalis rubra on seedlings of Veronica persica, a cosmopolitan weed, planted under two environments (light incubator and laboratory) with fundamental difference in light intensity. In the light incubator, O. rubra showed a moderate level of inhibition on the leaf growth of V. persica, probably due to a higher concentration or faster release of allelochemicals owing to high resource availability. On the contrary, the presence of O. rubra played a significant role in promoting the survival of V. persica seedlings in the laboratory, likely ascribed to water retention by O. rubra plants or stimulatory allelopathy in the different environment. Our study contributes to empirical investigations on how allelopathy varies with different conditions and points out the importance of environmental heterogeneity on allelopathy.
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