Commelina Resource Allocation, Physiological Integration And Allelopathy Research

Commelina benghalensis L. is a kind of annual herbaceous plants of Commelina communis L., and is commonly seen in croplands in China. It has two ways of reproduction, sexual and asexual. And I did experiments based on both of them in this research. As C. benghalensis L. is doing the sexual reproduction, it will produce four kinds of seeds resulted from over-ground and underground flowers. Therefore, I planted plantings from these four kinds of seeds with Hoagland liquor in our laboratory, and did some treatment till the new generation of seeds matured. Results were showed as following, when contribution to new generation of individual plant is concerned, over-ground large seeds (OL) made the most while underground large seeds (UL) made the least. Referring to reproductive allocation, plants from OL had most resource allocation to sexual reproduction yet UL had the least, which caused differences in reproductive effort and reproductive cost among four types of plants. Plants from UL had the least reproductive effort yet OL had the most. As far as reproductive cost is concerned, plants from large seeds were significantly less than plants from small seeds, and plants from over-ground small seeds (OS) were also significantly less than plants from underground small seeds (US), but differences between two types of large seeds were not significant. As C. benghalensis L. is doing the asexual reproduction depending on its stolon, it can be viewed as a typical clonal plant. Physiological integration is one of focal researches of clonal plants. To study physiological integration of C. benghalensis L., I planted plants in four ways: 1) Both of genet and ramet developed in complete Hoagland liquor, 2) Genet in Hoagland liquor lack of K while ramet in complete Hoagland liquor, 3) Genet in complete Hoagland liquor while ramet in Hoagland liquor lack of K, 4) Both of genet and ramet developed in Hoagland liquor lack of K. 30 days later, parameters of leaves of plants, such as content of K, relative content of chlorophyll, photosynthetic parameters and fluorescent parameters, and also biomass of each type of modules were measured. I came to the conclusion that K would transfer between genet and ramet, and orientation of transfer was from ramet to genet when plants were developed as genet in Hoagland liquor lack of K while ramet in complete Hoagland liquor, which proved physiological integration did exit in C. benghalensis L.. I also calculated the valueof integration intensity by content of K which was 19.22%. Another result was that assets distribution of plants of C. benghalensis L. was affected by physiological integration. Among these four ways, percentage of nutrient modules was the least while that of reproductive modules (flowers) was the most when both genet and ramet in complete Hoagland liquor. However, when genet was developed in complete Hoagland liquor but ramet in liquor lack of K, percentage of flowers decreased. And when genet was in Hoagland liquor lack of K but ramet in complete liquor, percentage of flowers was still more than the percentage in condition of both of them lacking of K. All the results showed condition of ramet affected on asset distribution of the whole plant.In some areas of Africa and America, C. benghalensis L. has been reported as uncontrolled weed, but in our country there is no report about this. To discuss relation between C. benghalensis L. and corn, I designed the experiment from two aspects: one was treating corn with different extraction from C. benghalensis L., and the result was that among different concentrations of extraction in my experiment, all concentrations of extraction of root promoted development of corn in root-length and seedling-height, while lower concentration of leaves showed promotion of development but higher concentration showed restraint of development. The other was planting corn and C. benghalensis L. together in two methods, and the result was that biomass of corn seedlings were increased very significantly by C. benghalensis L. in both methods, but to C. benghalensis L., just assets distributed to root were increased significantly. It is inferred that in our country, C. benghalensis L. could not be considered as a kind of uncontrolled weed and the relation between corn and C. benghalensis L. may benefit to each other.