Folia Geobotanica - Belowground plant organs and their functional ecology

Volume 58, issues 3-4, April 2024 (this opens in a new tab)

Issue editor: Jitka Klimešová

Although half of a plant is hidden belowground, the belowground organs and their functions are still receiving very little attention from researchers. Fine roots for resource acquisition, coarse roots, rhizomes, tubers, bulbs for clonal multiplication, resource foraging, resource sharing, connection of roots and shoots, fine root placement, space occupation, horizontal mobility, resprouting, carbon sequestration and other functions are not well understood. The reason is belowground position of those organs, lack of morphological understanding of their grow and laborious and destructive methods how to study them. One way how to ignite interest and to support effort of researchers in studying belowground organs is to organize special issues where collection of papers devoted to studies of belowground organs may more easily gain visibility.

The current special issue called “Belowground plant organs and their functional ecology” is already third hosted by Folia Geobotanica and devoted to belowground plant organs (Klimešová and Herben 2011, 2014). This time it is presenting 7 papers from 4 continents (South America, North America, Asia, Europe), covering not only seed plants but also ferns and analyzing several interesting topics. Covered topics represent research areas on belowground organs others than fine roots. Papers in special issue are (1) dealing with a role of belowground bud bearing organs in response to disturbance, environment or competition (Bombo et al. 2024, Bam et al. 2024), (2) describing diversity of belowground storage and bud bearing organs in a regional flora (Orzell et al. 2024; Ülgen and Tavşanoğlu 2024) or for one taxonomical group (de Paiva Farias et al. 2024), (3) proposing method how to manipulate root architecture to be able to study its effect on fine root functioning (Lubbe et al. 2024), and (4) reporting rare and interesting morphological trait (Menezes-e-Vasconcelos and Melo-de-Pinna 2024).

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