Preliminary Study on the Growth Pattern of Several Clonal Plants in Desert Zones of Xinjiang

Many species of desert clonal plants grow in the arid and semiarid regions in northwest China, they adapt the severe ecological environment with their own ways, and affect and change the appearances, functions and stability of the local plant communities and ecosystems with their physiological integrations and foraging behaviors. Therefore, it is quite necessary to research the desert clonal plants growing under the extremely arid environment. In this paper, a primary investigation on the growth pattern of three species of clonal plants in Turpan Eremophytes Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, is carried out. Turpan Eremophytes Botanical Garden, 34 hm 2 in area, is located in a wind-eroded mobile-dune region in the Turpan Basin, where the annual, extremely maximum and extremely minimum temperatures are 13.9 ℃, 47.6 ℃ and -28.6 ℃ respectively, the annual sunshine time is 3 049.5 hours, the annual precipitation is 16.4 mm only but the annual evaporation is as high as 3 000 mm, and the relatively humidity is about 40%. More than 500 species of desert plants have been introduced and planted in the garden, in which some of them are the clonal plants. The clonal propagation methods of several desert clonal plant species are analyzed, and the growth patterns of 3 clonal herb species (Glycyrrhiza aspera Pall., Karelinia caspica and Phragmites communis) growing under arid environment are preliminarily researched. Moreover, three conceptions for developing the studies on desert clonal plants are put forward based on the current status of desert clonal plant resources and the progress of ecology of clonal plants. It is suggested to further carry out the studies on the clonal plants growing in desert regions from three aspects, i.e., the roles of the clonal plants growing in desert regions in the plant communities and ecosystems, ecological studies on the behaviors of the clonal plants growing in desert regions, and the studies on the genetic diversity of the clonal plants growing in desert regions.