作 者 ：Ge Song, Hong De-yuan
期 刊 ：植物分类学报 1994年 6期
Keywords:Phenotypic plasticity,
Abstract:
Phenotypic plasticity is the environmental modification of genotypic expression
and an important means by which individual plants respond to environmental heterogeneity.
The study of phenotypic plasticity in the genus Adenophora, which is very complicated taxo-
nomically because of great morphological variation, proves to be helpful in both investigating
the phenotypic variation so as to evaluate potential taxonomic value of their characters and
providing important sources of information on the variation, adaptation and evolution of the
genus. Twenty-three populations representing all the six species in Adenophora potaninii
complex were transplanted into the garden. Of them six populations were selected for study-
ing their performance in the field and in the garden, in addition to cultivation experiment
under different treatments. The results show that there exists considerable developmental
plasticity in some leaf, floral and capsule characters. In particular, the leaf shape and length
of calyx lobe display significant developmental variation with the maximum being three times
as great as the minimum, which is noteworthy because they were previously considered as
diagnostic. The characters of root, caudex, stem and inflorescence are found to be very
plastic, especially the root diameter, the number of stems, stem height and inflorescence
length with great environmental plasticity. In addition, the populations from different habi-
tats show distinct amounts of plasticity. On the contrary, the characters of leaf, floral, cap-
sule and seed are less influenced by environments. It seems that the considerable variation in
the characters of leaf is attributed mainly to genetic differences. Finally, the phenotypic
plasticity of morphological characters of A. potaninii complex and its taxonomic significance
is discussed.