Life cycle stage, flooding depth and adventitious root formation

Adventitious root formation is an important acclimation of wetland plants in response to flooding, but studies often only examine responses at a single developmental stage. Zhang et al. study the effects of life cycle stage and water depth in the terrestrial wetland species Solanum dulcamara and find that adventitious root formation is constrained in juvenile compared to mature plants, and is delayed by deep compared to shallow flooding. The potential to deploy a flooding escape strategy, i.e. by adventitious root formation, may thus change throughout a plant’s life cycle, and is largely dependent on flooding depth. Adaptive responses at a given stage of the life cycle thus do not necessarily predict how the plant will respond to flooding during another growth stage.