ABSENCE OF INTERACTIONS BETWEEN PERENNIAL BUNCHGRASSES IN A SEMIARID TEMPERATE SAVANNA - A 5-YEAR FIELD EXPERIMENT

There is widespread recognition of the importance of long-term experim ental studies of plant interactions, but such experiments are rarely c onducted. Pairwise interactions between three species of perennial gra sses were assessed and described over a 5-year period. Experimental tr eatments in which some or all neighbors were removed were maintained a nd plant basal area was monitored throughout the experiment. In additi on, above-ground biomass was collected over a 3-year period. Repeated- measures analysis of variance revealed no evidence of interactions bet ween plants. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.