Hi all,
how do plants with high CO2 needs grow in natural systems?
Emersed, either the whole plant for plants like
Hemianthus, as emergents in
Staurogyne,
Hygrophila, with floating leaves (
Limnobium, Nymphaea) or plants that would develop floating leaves if we allowed them to, like
Heternathera zosterifloia & Cambomba spp. Also most true aquatic plants won't naturally have stem leaves all the way to the bottom of the stem, they will concentrate their leaves in the surface zone where both PAR and CO2 are more available.
Another complicating factor is carbonate hardness, plants from hard water can utilise bicarbonate (HCO3-) ions, this doesn't mean that they can't use CO2, but this gives them a source of carbon in situations which are naturally low in CO2. You can see this happening in water which combines being reasonably nutrient rich with have high carbonate hardness.
In the UK a "chalk stream" will fulfil these criteria and have a large vegetation biomass. This is the Hampshire Avon (in S. Wiltshire), with Hemlock Water-Dropwort, Water Cress and Water Crowfoot. <
Restoration Open Day on the Avon | Cain Bio-Engineering>
With all the splashing and flowing water in streams etc, doesnt the gas equilibrium tend towards 1-2 ppm CO2 as you mention above?
Yes, pretty much. Also all heavily vegetated water will become CO2 depleted during the photo-period, almost irrespective of their flow.
Whats the trick nature has up its sleaves to provide CO2 to the plants before it degasses, and how does it get accumulated to high values in the first place?
As well as the ability to use HCO3-, a few aquatic plants like
Isoetes are CAM plants who store carbon in the cells as malate, and a few more C4 plants (
Elodea, Hydrilla) which concentrate CO2 (as HCO3-). Most "standard" C3 plants, don't have methods for concentrating CO2 and just combine available CO2 with ribulose diphosphate to form 2 x
3-phosphoglycerate ("3-PG") molecules, (this is where the "C3" bit comes from).
This is why C3 plants show a strong growth response to added CO2, more CO2 diffusing in through the stomata leads to higher CO2 levels in the mesophyll and more carbon fixation, assuming that other parameters aren't limiting. In this non-limiting situation photosynthetic rate is governed purely by incident energy (PAR), (and this was the idea behind EI).
cheers Darrel