An ephemeral plant is one marked by short life cycles. The word ephemeral means transitory or quickly fading. In regard to

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...

s, it refers to several distinct growth strategies. The first, spring ephemeral, refers to perennial plants that emerge quickly in the spring and die back to their underground parts after a short growth and reproduction phase. Desert ephemerals are plants which are

adapted In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the po ...

to take advantage of the short wet periods in

arid A region is arid when it severely lacks available water, to the extent of hindering or preventing the growth and development of plant and animal life. Regions with arid climates tend to lack vegetation and are called xeric or desertic. Most ...

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...

s. Mud-flat ephemerals take advantage of short periods of low water. In areas subjected to recurring human disturbance, such as plowing, weedy ephemerals are very short-lived plants whose entire

life cycle Life cycle, life-cycle, or lifecycle may refer to: Science and academia *Biological life cycle, the sequence of life stages that an organism undergoes from birth to reproduction ending with the production of the offspring * Life-cycle hypothesis ...

takes less than a growing season. In each case, the species has a life cycle timed to exploit a short period when resources are freely available.

Spring ephemerals

Spring ephemerals are

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wid ...

woodland

wildflower A wildflower (or wild flower) is a flower that grows in the wild, meaning it was not intentionally seeded or planted. The term implies that the plant probably is neither a hybrid nor a selected cultivar that is in any way different from the ...

s which develop aerial parts (i.e. stems, leaves, and

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechani ...

s) of the

early each spring and then quickly bloom, and produce seed. The leaves often wither leaving only underground structures (i.e.

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...

s, rhizomes, and bulbs) for the remainder of the year. This strategy is very common in herbaceous communities of

deciduous forest In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, ...

s as it allows small herbaceous plants to take advantage of the high levels of sunlight reaching the forest floor prior to the formation of a canopy by

woody plant A woody plant is a plant that produces wood as its structural tissue and thus has a hard stem. In cold climates, woody plants further survive winter or dry season above ground, as opposite to herbaceous plants that die back to the ground until sp ...

s. Examples include: spring beauties,

trillium ''Trillium'' (trillium, wakerobin, toadshade, tri flower, birthroot, birthwort, and sometimes "wood lily") is a genus of about fifty flowering plant species in the family Melanthiaceae. ''Trillium'' species are native to temperate regions of No ...

harbinger of spring ''Erigenia bulbosa'', also known as harbinger of spring or pepper and salt, is a flowering perennial plant in the family Apiaceae. ''E. bulbosa'' is the only species in the genus ''Erigenia'' and tribe Erigenieae. This plant is known as harbinge ...

and the genus of ''

Dicentra ''Dicentra'' ( Greek ''dís'' "twice", ''kéntron'' "spur"), known as bleeding-hearts, is a genus of eight species of herbaceous plants with oddly shaped flowers and finely divided leaves, native to eastern Asia and North America. Description F ...

'' particularly ''D. cucullaria,'' Dutchman's breeches and ''D. canadensis,'' squirrel corn. In the herb layer of beech forest and hornbeam-sessile oak forest, tuberous, bulbous and rhizomous plants are abundant. They comprise the spring

geophyte A storage organ is a part of a plant specifically modified for storage of energy (generally in the form of carbohydrates) or water. Storage organs often grow underground, where they are better protected from attack by herbivores. Plants that have ...

s (tuberous, bulbous and rhizomous).

Desert ephemerals

Desert ephemerals, such as '' Arabidopsis thaliana'', are plants which are

to take advantage of the very short favourable seasons in deserts. Annual plants in deserts may use the weedy ephemeral strategy to survive in the desert environment. These

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

survive the dry seasons through

seed dormancy Seed dormancy is an evolutionary adaptation that prevents seeds from germinating during unsuitable ecological conditions that would typically lead to a low probability of seedling survival. Dormant seeds do not germinate in a specified period of ...

. Alternatively, some

desert plants may die back to their underground parts and become dormant when there is not enough water available.

Mud flat ephemerals

Most water bodies have natural changes in water level over a year. For example, rivers have higher water periods after melting snow or rainy seasons, followed by natural low water periods. Large lakes have similar seasonal changes, but also changes over longer periods of time. Many short-lived plants, particularly annual plants, grow during low water periods, then set seeds which remain buried in the mud until the next low water period.

Weedy ephemerals

Many agricultural weeds are ephemeral and reproduce rapidly after human disturbance from plowing. Roadside weeds similarly exploit the disturbance from road construction and mowing. These plants rarely have any commercial use and can be

invasive weed An invasive species otherwise known as an alien is an introduced organism that becomes overpopulated and harms its new environment. Although most introduced species are neutral or beneficial with respect to other species, invasive species ad ...

s. Examples include: '' Cardamine hirsuta'' and ''

Cannabis ruderalis ''Cannabis ruderalis'' is a variety, subspecies, or species of ''Cannabis'' native to Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. It contains a relatively low quantity of psychoactive compound tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) Some scholars accept ''C.&nb ...

''. Plants which have short life spans, rapid rates of growth, and high levels of seed production are also termed ruderals.Grime, J. P. 1979. Plant Strategies and Vegetation Processes. Chichester: John Wiley.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ephemeral Plant Flowers