We typically think of plants strutting their best stuff aboveground: showy flowers, fragrant blossoms, and unique shapes abound. But their development belowground is equally magical.
“For the last 400 million years, since plants colonized land, roots have been the true engine of terrestrial nutrient cycling,” marvels SFI Omidyar Fellow Mingzhen Lu, the lead author of a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Roots are the foundation of biodiversity.”
In the study, Lu and his team of international collaborators, which included esteemed scientists William Bond (University of Cape Town) and Lars Hedin (Princeton University), dug deep to better understand one of the most extraordinary root systems in the world.
The researchers conducted a four-year manipulated experiment to explore the stark divide between the Fynbos and Afrotemperate Forest biomes in South Africa’s western cape. Fynbos, a shrubby biome with tremendous plant diversity, abuts Afrotemperate Forest, a woodland dominated by a small number of tree species. The unusual biome boundary is so narrow that within a few steps, one passes from a hot, open shrubland into the cool, mossy shade of the forest.
Read more at Santa Fe Institute
Photo Credit: Callan Cohen via Wikimedia Commons
