Dynamics of Development of Juvenile Plants on the Meadows of the Alpine Belt of Northwest Caucasus

摘要

We investigated juvenile plants on the Hedysaro caucasicae—Gerametum gymnocauli meadows (Rabotnova and Onipchenko, 2002) of the alpine meadows of the northwest Caucasus. During the course of 5 years, we considered all juvenile plants on 16 plots of 0.5 m~2. We recorded 4485 sprouts and monitored their destiny. The dominant species were Hedysarum caucasicum Bieb. and Geranium gymnocaulon DC, and most species of Asteraceae had juvenile plants, but without seeds in soil bank of seeds. The grass speciesrarely produced sprouts and had seeds in the soil bank. The majority of sprouts died after the first winter. Sprouts of the dominant species were in their juvenile stage for a long time, and the sprouts of other species quickly shifted to the vegetativestage.