Yijia Li^1,2 , Shanjiang Qi² , Xiqiang Song² , Cuili Zhang² , Mingxun Ren² , Xudong Yu²

1 Zhangzhou Institute of Technology, Zhangzhou, 363000, China
2 Key Laboratory of Germplasm Resources of Tropical Special Ornamental Plants of Hainan Province, College of Forestry, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, China
Author    Correspondence author
Plant Gene and Trait, 2021, Vol. 12, No. 3   doi: 10.5376/pgt.2021.12.0003
Received: 01 Sep., 2021    Accepted: 06 Sep., 2021    Published: 09 Oct., 2021

This article was first published in Molecular Plant Breeding in Chinese, and here was authorized to translate and publish the paper in English under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Li Y.J., Qi S.J., Song X.Q., Zhang C.L., Ren M.X., and Yu X.D., 2021, Clonal growth characteristic of epiphytic orchid Dendrobium sinense, Plant Gene and Trait, 12(3): 1-8 (doi:10.5376/pgt.2021.12.0003)

Dendrobium sinense is a perennial epiphytic orchid, which belongs to the genus of Dendrobium and the family of Orchidaceae. Under natural conditions, D. sinense has a low seed setting rate and the environmental requirements for its seed germination a very stringent. Besides sexual propagation, asexual ways like clonal propagation is also found in D. sinense. In this study, five transects were set up in Bawang Ridge of Hainan Province to monitor the dynamic change of D. sinense population and study the influence of clonal propagation on population ecology of D. sinense. The main results are as follows: D. sinense belongs to a bulbous clonal plant, Spacer between pseudobulbs is only 0.35 cm around. Buds are tillered on the base of the one-year pseudobulb and deveiopment through the energy transfer between the ramets to continuation the genet life. Branching intensity enhanced as genet grow up. And different ramet from the genet have big difference in growth situation. The scale of genet cannot expansion infinitely, D. sinense can adjust expend speed according to the density of ramets. Clonal growth provides material and energy reserves to sexual reproduction and create more sites for flowering by increasing the growth axis.

Dendrobium sinense; Population ecology; Clonal growth; Sexual reproduction