Clonal growth diversity and bud banks of plants in the Czech flora: an evaluation using the CLO-PLA3 database.

The CLO-PLA3 database includes data on vegetative growth relevant to clonality and vegetative regeneration for all (not only clonal) Central-European species. It consists of sheets, with each sheet based on a particular literature reference or our own morphological study documented by drawings. The data are interpreted according to a standardized protocol. The total number of sheets in the database is 7086. A total of 5818 sheets cover the flora of the Czech Republic representing 2775 taxa. Original drawings are available for 938 sheets. There are altogether 17 types of clonal growth organs (CGOs) used do describe morphology of iterative growth. Other clonal traits are the role of CGOs in the life cycle of the plant, shoot cyclicity, persistence of connections between ramets, number of offspring shoots per parent shoot per year, lateral spread per year, type of branching, tillering in graminoids, roots along the CGO, leaf distribution, size of offspring shoot, timing of CGO formation in ontogeny and overlap of shoot generations. Bud bank traits include vertical distribution of buds, their number per shoot and seasonality. Whole-plant traits include taproot persistence, reproduction type, storage organs, age at first flowering and genet life-span. An analysis of the CLO-PLA3 database for the flora of the Czech Republic revealed that plants with epigeogenous and hypogeogenous rhizomes are the most frequent among those growing clonally, followed by root-sprouters, non-clonal plants and plants with rooting above-ground stems. Other types of clonal growth organs like bulbs, stem and root tubers, bulbils, turions, plant fragments and budding are rare. A connection between clonal offspring shoots persisting for more than two years, a shoot longevity of one year, production of one offspring shoot per parent shoot per year and little lateral spread are prevailing trait values in the Czech flora. Seasonal bud banks prevail above ground, perennial bud banks occurmostly in the upper soil layer and the potential bud bank predominantly deeper than 10 cm below ground. From the analysis it follows that even if clonality is widespread in the Czech flora, the overall vegetative multiplication or spreading rates are low. The most common bud bank types reflect the fact that the majority of species in the Czech flora are perennial herbaceous plants.